To Think Is To Solve

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 16 February, 2017. 
 

How often have you seen the following in job ads? “Someone keen to take responsibility and with the confidence to challenge established practices and come up with new ways of working…” “An enquiring mind and the ability to understand and solve complex challenges are necessary…” “We are looking for innovative minds and creative spirits ...”

What do these have in common? They all ask essentially the same two things: The ability to use your own initiative, to think for yourself, to be creative and pro-active, and the ability to resolve problems, to think logically and/or laterally, to use ingenuity to overcome difficulties and to research and implement solutions.

In other words, analytical and problem solving skills. Now one would assume that these skills are vital to surviving in the modern world, yet study after study has shown that these skills are lacking in a significant percentage of the population. The American 2012 Critical Skills Survey, which polled 768 managers and executives, found that employers rated most of their employees as either average or below average in communication skills (62%), creativity (61%), collaboration (52%), and critical thinking (49%).

And yet, these skills are essential for every business. Any business will have challenges or obstacles which need to be overcome.  If they employ people who are adept at solving problems at all levels, it reduces the need for complex chains of command or lessens demand on managers' time. In short, it will help save time and therefore money. Analytical skills are becoming quite important - we are all bombarded with huge amounts of information every day! Being able to quickly yet comprehensively identify and evaluate the most important or relevant information for the business and your job will be an increasingly essential skill.

Even here at Trustco, it is how Dr Quinton van Rooyen evaluates employees: “We’ve identified 5 basic types of employees. 

The Blind Employee - These employees can’t see a problem even if it is staring them right in the face. They work like robots, following a set procedure, and never notice if there’s something wrong, or something that is impeding efficiency. You don’t need these employees – they can be replaced by automation.

The Averse Employee - These can see a problem, but they try to avoid it as they are afraid doing something about it might make them responsible for it. These employees are actively trying to avoid adding value to your business. Replace them.

The Identifying Employee - These employees can see a problem, but they can’t take the initiative to solve it, and simply report it up their reporting line. These are the minimum acceptable employees, your basic employees. They should form the backbone of your company.

The Transformative Employee - These employees can identify a problem, and once handed a problem that’s been identified, solve it. These employees should be your supervisors and line managers. They’re the employees who are making your business great. 

The Revolutionary Employee - These problem-solving employees are not only great thinkers and innovators, but they also have the ability to get employee buy-in. They can thus solve social/people problems, and involve others in the problem solving process. These employees can change the world, and should be your senior and top management. “

So if these skills are truly so indispensable, why do so many people lack them? The answer can be found in our model of education. For too long, education has been at the whim of the memorization model of education, where students are taught simply to receive, memorize and repeat information. Teachers simply drop the information on students, with little in the way of discussion and they are expected to sit down, shut up, and remember. This might have been appropriate for an age in which student were to be merely compliant, obedient factory workers – but those jobs are increasingly being replaced by machines, and the mind is the one area where machines have yet to supplant us.

Then there’s the problem-solving model of education – where students and teachers work together in communicating and learning information. Teachers ask questions, and engage students to think critically and evaluate the material – they create critical questions and answers that not only better help students understand the material, but also enable them to remember it better.

Teachers, naturally, are a bit resistant to these methods. After all, this is not how things are done! Students shouldn’t talk back to teachers! Well, yes – if what you want is obedient drones, instead of productive members of society. That model is quite authoritarian, and has no place in a democratic society. The other concern, of course, is that teachers worry that students will come up with ideas that the teachers won’t understand. Well, if a child can outthink you, you’ve either got a very clever child, or…

The fact of the matter is that they should be able to explain their methods, and thus teachers should be able to follow their reasoning. And even if they did not know, there’s no shame in stating that, and assuring them you’ll find out. After all, teachers are expected to stay up to date on their field – and by finding out the answers to their students’ questions, they too will learn something new. 

With the importance of analytical and problem solving skills only increasing year-on-year, it becomes essential that we all possess these skills. After all, if you had to choose an employee or a co-worker, would you rather have one that was analytical, insightful and problem-solving, or would you prefer one that could rattle off a bunch of fact, but was dumb-founded when asked something they didn’t memorize?

 

The Prevalence of Poverty

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 9 February, 2017. 

Oxfam, a confederation of charitable organizations focused on the alleviation of global poverty, recently released a report with a rather disturbing statistic. In ‘An economy for the 99 percent,’ they revealed that just 8 men owned as much as the poorest 3.6 billion people on the planet. These eight, the report claims, are a symptom of growing income inequality in the world, and an obstacle to poverty alleviation. In order of wealth, they are: Bill Gates, Microsoft founder; Amancio Ortega, founder of fashion house Inditex; Warren Buffett, financier; Carlos Slim Helu, Mexican business magnate; Jeff Bezos, Amazon boss; Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook creator; Larry Ellison, Oracle founder; and Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York.

And yet… global poverty continues to decline despite these individuals’ massive wealth. In the last 25 years, the share of the world population that lives in extreme poverty (defined as less than US$ 1.90 per day) has declined from 35% in 1990 to just 10.7% today. Even sub-Saharan Africa has its share decline from a peak of 58.4% in 1993 to 41% today. Globally, the number of people living in extreme poverty has decreased from 1.85 billion in 1990, to just 766 million today – in 25 years, over 1 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. 

 

The numbers show that a large number of those are, however, still in Africa. Those is extreme poverty are 383 Million in Africa, 327 Million in Asia, 19 Million in South America, 13 Million in North America, 2.5 Million in Oceania and 0.7 Million in Europe. But how many of these are in Namibia? Luckily, the Namibia Statistics Agency is on the case, and conducted a Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey in 2015/20-16, to update their 2009/2010 one. And they have released their preliminary Key Poverty Indicators.

In order to measure poverty, they established three different poverty lines. The food poverty line is defined as those persons unable to purchase enough food to sustain themselves, i.e. unable to buy 2100 calories worth of food each day. This was calculated to cost N$ 293.10 per month. In 2003, this meant 9% of the population, or 163 000 people in Namibia, lived below this line. Since then, this number has reduced to 5.8% of the population, or 31 000 people less. 

Then there’s the extreme poverty line, i.e. those living on less than N$ 389.30 per month. This measure by nature includes the food poverty line. In 2003, this amounted to 21.9% of the population, or 398 000 people in Namibia. By now, that has been reduced to 11% of the population, or about 147 000 people no longer living in extreme poverty!

Finally, we come to the standard poverty line – those people defined as being simply poor. This is defined as living on less than N$ 520.80 per month. In 2003, this amounted to a staggering 37.7% of the population – 685 000 people. Now, however, this has been reduced to a mere 18% of the population – a reduction of almost 275 000 people no longer living in poverty! 

Clearly, the Namibian government has done an outstanding job in reducing poverty here at home. Still, that 18% is quite a sizable 410 000 people in our country. We still have some ways to go, hence the Harambee Prosperity Plan. But what about that income inequality? Well, last time it was measured in 2009/2010, our Gini Coefficient had been reduced to 59.7 – we were no longer the country with the most unequal distribution of income in the world, and moved down to sixth place. There was much room for improvement, and improve we did. The latest figures show our Gini Coefficient down further, to 57.2. This means we’re now tenth in the world! We’ve moved up to better than Zambia! 

Well, with so much improvement, why then the alarmist nature of the Oxfam report? Perhaps it is because while the world certainly has improved for those living in developing countries, income inequality has increased among the developed nations of the world, and they are feeling the squeeze on the middle class there. In fact, while there were significant real income gains over the past 15 years for those from the bottom of the income distribution to the 80^th percentile, those from the 80^th percentile to the 95^th received no gains at all – and that’s where the Developed middle class find themselves.

It is also a fact that humans are wired to pay way more attention to negative news than positive news – hence why I’ve seen little about the Key Poverty Indicators of Namibia over the past month. Media tends to focus on the negative news in order to attract eyeballs – and that’s not a balanced view of the world. On every day in the last 25 years there could have been a newspaper headline saying “The number of people in extreme poverty fell by 137,000 since yesterday”.

For example, Oxfam failed to mention that five of those eight richest people have signed The Giving Pledge, Bill Gates (co-founder), Warren Buffett (co-founder), Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg. That pledges them to commit more than half of their wealth to philanthropy. The total commitments under the pledge is already US$ 732 billion.

Two-thirds of the poverty reduction over the past two decades have come from economic growth. As Mr Buffet said, “In my entire lifetime, everything that I’ve spent will be quite a bit less than 1 percent of everything I make. The other 99 percent plus will go to others because it has no utility to me. So it’s silly for me to not transfer that utility to people who can use it.” It is time we harness the knowledge and experience of those who know how to create wealth if we want to create the growth required to do it. They seem to stand ready to help the world do just that.

The First Defence

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 2 February, 2017. 

Constitution Day is once again approaching, and as we marvel once again at its remarkable role in our sovereign, secular, democratic and unitary state that secures for us all justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, we should cast our eyes abroad. Because while we recognize that the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is indispensable for freedom, justice and peace, it seems that our young republic needs to cast its eyes upon its older siblings, to see where they went wrong, and how we can keep from following in their worrying path. 

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2016 was released, and Namibia scored 6.31, 71^st in the list, and is ranked as a ‘Flawed Democracy.’  Perhaps more surprisingly, is the that venerable institution hailed at the model for participatory democracy, the United States, has dropped a few places on the list – and is no longer classified as a ‘Full Democracy,’ but also now a flawed one, ranked 21^st alongside Italy. 

While it would be simple to ascribe this drop to the election of President Trump, the reality is that this slump in its rating is not due to his election, but rather that his election is the result of a slump in its democratic values. Indeed, the US election results and the Brexit vote have both been described as the surprises of the year for democratic countries, and yet they had two opposing effects on the rankings of its respective countries. 

In the United Kingdom, the Brexit vote encouraged political discussion and participation to an extent not seen in decades, culminating in a 72% voter turnout, much larger than is usual for the United Kingdom. People are not apathetic to politics – especially when they believe they’ll be able to make a difference. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, all political parties in the UK experienced an increase in membership, and this moved the UK up to 16^th place in the Democracy Index.

And yet somehow the media and the politicians have interpreted these results as a ‘backlash against the democratic order’ and a threat to liberal democracy. What an odd interpretation. The voters defied the politicians, and this is a threat to democracy? Perhaps it should be seen as a vindication of democracy – these votes were the consequence of the failings of modern democracy, not the cause of it.

This is because over the past 50 years, the political parties have been changing. As they started to lose touch with their constituents, the voters, they’ve tried to regain ground lost by closer to the centre – to the government voted in. Their views began to diverge from the voters they neglected and left behind. In these countries, the old left/right divide in politics began to mean less and less, as the issues voters cared about were ignored, and parties split on issues they themselves cared about, but not the voters. 

As a result, voters felt they no longer had much of a say in government – it was by the parties, for the parties. The failing of that democratic model became evident in voter apathy – lower and lower turnout at elections. This had a corrosive effect on confidence in government. Fewer than 1 in 5 American surveyed believe that the government can be trusted to do what is right, and only 9% had confidence in Congress.

This lack of democracy – the lack of a voice! – provided the impetus for the Brexit vote and President Trump. But before we get complacent, we should consider that the same can and will happen here. We’ve seen it start in South Africa, with lower voter turnouts and the rise of the EFF. Namibia’s scores on the Democracy Index for Functioning of Government is a mere 5.36, showing a lack of confidence, and our score for Political Culture is also low at 5.63. We’ve already seen the signs – the low voter turnout for local and regional government elections, for example. 

In countries with a dominant single party, like Namibia or South Africa, those in power too can become complacent, and lose touch with the issues voters care about. With a declining trust in government, the same sudden challenge from the electorate will come forward, and just like the UK and the USA, the political elite, unused to having their worldview challenged, won’t know what to make of it. 

There, they blame popular ignorance and xenophobia. Secretary Clinton called them the ‘basket of deplorables.’ They call it a backlash against the democratic order – and some are even arguing that democracy is thus not working, and that it is wrong to trust ordinary people to make political decisions. Unfortunately, this reeks of a new institutionalised aristocracy that wants to decide what’s best for you, without your input. 

How does that respect or recognize inherent dignity the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family? Does that sound like it is promoting freedom, justice and peace? They say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those in power will contrive of the means or reason to remain there should they lose the consent of the governed. It is why we have our constitution, the safeguard against misuse of the power we grant our government. And that is why we must always remember that the first line of defence for the constitution remains, and always will be, We The People.