How Humans Fight the Laws of Nature: and Lose -- Discover How to Thrive in Life and Business

By Bill Caswell

All too often, in our efforts to be ambitious and succeed in life, we fight against nature's laws and fail. What would happen if we could understand some of the basic natural principals and apply them effectively? As well, if things aren't going quite right, could a new perspective on nature provide us insights to help us recover and move forward?

• Language: English
• Publisher: 2650547 Ontario Ltd.
• Release date: Jun 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9780981081656

Bill Caswell

Bill Caswell, B. Eng., P. Eng., founder of CCCC - a company that focuses on strategic planning - was previously a co-founder and CEO of an e-learning company and other high technology enterprises. As president of SPS, a financial software company with Offices in Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax, Seattle, and Guadalajara, Mexico, Bill sold the technology to a $1 billion company. Earlier, as a design engineer, Bill was responsible for a number of inventions in the radar field. Besides English, Bill speaks Spanish. He is also very well capable of communicating in German and French.

Book preview

Discover How to Thrive in Life and Business

How Humans Fight the Laws of Nature – and Lose

By William E. Caswell

Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2011 by William E. Caswell

Asset Beam Publishing Ltd., 1 Cleopatra Dr. Suite 202, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2G 3M9.

All right reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under applicable copyright legislation, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the publisher’s prior written permission.

ISBN 978-0-9810816-4-9

For additional information and to access Book Two (without cost), visit http://www.fightingnature.com.

To Ichak Adizes

who inspired me to search deeper

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

A Note To Readers

PART I – Laying the Ground Work

Chapter 1. Where the World Stands Today

1.1 Today’s Human Struggle

1.2 The History of the Business Battle

1.3 Profits

1.4 Compiling Facts and Forming Conclusions

1.5 Good Books that Struggle with the Questions (and Answers)

1.6 Respect

Chapter 2. The Laws of Nature

2.1 Scientific Discovery

2.2 Some Laws of Nature

2.3 Putting a Bit of Meat onto the Laws of Nature

PART II – How Human Endeavors Seem to Work

Chapter 3. The Greatest Secret in the World

3.1 Brief Introduction of where The Greatest Secret is coming from

3.2 Cooperation

3.3 Survival

3.4 A Few Conclusions So Far on the Theme of Cooperation

3.5 How Emotions, as a Dominant Force, Are Taken Advantage of

3.6 So What?

3.7 Respect

3.8 Making It Work for You

3.9 Blame

3.10 Defusing Emotions

3.11 An Example of Defusing

3.12 Summary of The Greatest Secret in the World

Chapter 4. Human Behaviours.

4.1 Happiness Means Control

4.2 The Sexes Really are Different

4.3 Status

4.4 Money

4.5 Beauty

4.6 Competition

4.7 Intellectual vs. Primordial

4.8 Intermixing the Priorities of Life

Chapter 5. As Clear as 1, 2, 3 .

5.0 The Deepest Secret of all

5.1 Human Diversity Makes a Complete Picture

5.2 Turning the Best of your Job into Your Best Job

5.3 Groups of People

5.4 Summarizing the Power of 1, 2 and 3

Chapter 6. Nature’s Behaviours on Humans

6.1 Feedback

6.2 Chaos

6.3 Luck

6.4 Long Term

6.5 Laws of Physics

PART III – What the World Needs Now

Chapter 7. How to Run Just About Anything

7.1 Communications

7.2 Set a Purpose and a Plan

7.3 Or Shake It Up

7.4 Deal with the Problems

7.5 Make People Accountable to Themselves

7.6 Putting the Final Pieces into Place

7.7 Maintaining Your Group at Excellence

7.8 Summary

Chapter 8. Fixing a Disastrous Example

8.1 How Disastrous an Example?

8.2 Starting at the Top Person

8.3 Moving to the Top Body – Parliament

8.4 The Government of Canada

8.5 Homing In on the Solution

8.6 How to Run the Government

PART IV – Wrap-Up

Chapter 9. Final Considerations

9.1 The No-Layoff Policy

9.2 Frequent Absences

9.3 Motivation

9.4 Unresponsive People

9.5 Centralization

9.6 Retirement

9.7 World Knowledge

Epilog

9.8 Moving Forward

Glossary of Terms

Bibliography

Alphabetical Index

About the Author

Acknowledgements

It is with the greatest sense of appreciation I acknowledge and thank those who have assisted me in this endeavour:

Caroline Warrior of Gatineau, Quebec, Canada Dr. Michel Jullian of Aylmer, Quebec, Canada Sylvia Smith of Midland, Ontario, Canada

Julia Petrakis of Camano Island, Washington, U.S. as well as:

Carole Earle

Don Butler

Dr. Jennifer Decker Dr. Maria Trainer Jessica Skof

Mark Buckshon Ricardo Gomez Upkar Bilkhu Raymond Leveille

All of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Foreword

You and I are observers of a civic leader, an NGO captain, the head of an enterprise, or a president of a company or a university – one who is expected to deliver significant results every year. So you and I ask that person: How’s it going? Now the true answer, please.

For most of these people, it is not going as well as was hoped. This book looks at the mystery of failed human achievements world wide – war being the most obvious of them. I, with my 40 years of business focus, having seen degrees of substantive failure in almost every organization I have visited, have observed (and lived) the prevalence of unnecessary turmoil and its costly results. It is easy to see that the scope of this picture of human-group failure extends to include hospitals, schools, universities, civic and national politics, oil rigs and beyond. Is there a predictable and correctible reason? Here is a story that answers yes and has been designed to show why and how. This treatise does not offer a recipe for efficiency but rather it forces the realization that it is the ignoring of the fundamental and physical laws of nature that frequently gets us into our difficulties – and by extension, observing these laws, can get us out of trouble and get us out relatively quickly.

For those of you, not in the business sector and diligently going about achieving things every day in the other spheres, let me clearly distinguish the difference between business in this book and all the other sectors. THERE IS NONE! This book is about people – more to the point, about people cooperating to achieve things. This story is about human endeavours, about groups of people working together to achieve great things, greater than they would be able to do individually. My own focus, as it happens, is on business after a lifetime in those trenches, so to speak, but almost every word in these pages applies to non-profits, NGOs, charities, universities, hospitals, governments, etc., every bit as well. This subject is all about people working together and finding a way to struggle less to get the innovations and improvements they seek. The answer, in short, is about allowing groups of people to cooperate, because it is more natural to cooperate than not and acknowledging that lack of cooperation is caused by obstacles set up by other humans, usually because they are ignoring natural laws.

Businesses are supposed to know what they are doing, but when one looks at the most successful companies in the world, one will find that even those icons of commerce have considerable and ongoing trouble. (How did General Motors fare in 2009?) Do doctors have trouble removing tonsils? Not so much. Do engineers have trouble building bridges? Not so much. Are leaders of major endeavours as smart as engineers and doctors? I think so and most leaders think so. Something is wrong with human enterprise, if very clever, extremely diligent and clearly industrious teams of people can’t seem to master it, to get the outcomes they predict regularly.

Let us destroy a myth. While there are some business successes, most businesses are not successful. CERTAINLY MOST ARE NOT SUCCESSF UL OVER THE LONG TERM. Where are AddressographMultigraph and Gulf + Western, the darlings of the stock market in the ’60s? Simply look around you for business disasters; the evidence is everywhere. And it has been this way for decades.

The reason non-business people should care about business is, to paraphrase Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.: business makes things work in this world like nothing else. And if businesses succeed, we as a society will progress. The economic catastrophe of 2009, while a business disaster, was a societal failure with a huge loss of jobs, homes, stock market holdings and income. So society and business are inextricably intertwined.

I offer nothing new – it is as old as the Universe – but I offer a different perspective I think you should consider. That perspective is based on observing the fundamentals of nature and of human behaviour. (Some of the laws of nature are introduced in Chapter 2.) With a knowledge of fundamentals, one can do things right or at least predict what will happen to Z if one tweaks A. Additionally, I bring the good news that I have tried these methods for the past 10 years, guiding a wide range of peopled groups (companies in high tech and construction; lawyers; not-for-profit arts organizations; medical organizations; wine merchants; manufacturers, etc.) and I have nothing but success to report. In fact, there was never even a hiccup along my way in implementing these common-sense methodologies: results up, morale up, self-esteem up, sales up, profits up, and so on.

In this book you will also discover a multi-billion dollar enterprise that has been following many of these principles for 115 years and stands out because of its continuous success even into this modern era. I hope you find this information worth your further investigation.

Be warned, I am not just crying Woe is me, what shall we do? I am providing answers, really practical answers. Those answers stem from the observation that humans have continued and probably will continue to work against the laws of Mother Nature. Since nature has been time-tested for at least 13 billion years, perhaps we should listen to what it says. In fact, we must if we are to be successful. If we fight the laws of nature, we will lose – every time.

Bill Caswell

Ottawa, Canada

Pen first put to paper in May 2010

A Note to Readers about the Organization of this Volume

This volume is unusual in that, essentially concerning a technical subject, it has been presented in as readable a fashion as my engineering mind can do by creating two portions: Book One, text and Book Two, tables. To separate details from ideas, this work has left the details to what is called Book Two in a set of appendices and tables. Book Two has more pages than the Book One text.

Book One is presented here. Our test with readers revealed that 9 out of 10 chose not to read Book Two when it was appended. Therefore, Book Two has been omitted. However, it is available to any reader on request. Simply go to www.fightingnature.com and pick up the soft copy version of Book Two at no charge.

In order not to distract the reader from the ideas presented in Book One, the reference numbers and appendix designations for the ideas are not inserted throughout the main text. Instead, there are several other aids to locate the details:

• The chapter’s References are listed at the end of each chapter.

• Please use the Table of Contents to locate a relevant detail.

• As well, the deep drilling is left within each Appendix of Book Two, which is available without additional cost at www.fightingnature.com. With Book Two, the corresponding text section of Book One to which the appendix refers is shown.

• Reference books, identified in the Bibliography, are referred to by a number in brackets e.g. (6).

• The Alphabetical Index at the end of each book will assist in locating a subject detail.

BOOK ONE

PART I

LAYING THE GROUND WORK

CHAPTER 1

Where the World Stands Today

1.1 Today’s Human Struggle

As I write this, oil pours out of a Gulf of Mexico sea-based source unabated for its 42nd day. Israeli enforcement of its naval blockade on Gaza has left 10 people dead, battles rage all around the world, our Canadian House of Commons appears as a circus to most visitors to the Chambers, even school children. Drug wars rage incessantly in Jamaica, Mexico and Colombia – fuelled by the opiate cravings of the Americas and the rest of modern society. The world is a mess. A new dose of disasters arrives almost every day, delivered to our living rooms by our TVs and newspapers. Deep thinkers abhor this destructive confusion, yet based on the record so far, humankind seems powerless to stop it.

This book will look into the social perspective, beyond business for the most part. However, for the moment bear with me as the next three sections look into my area of specialization, the business viewpoint, after which the remainder of the story will move to society in general.

1.2 The History of the Business Battle

Sad tales about business abound. Yet, how long has this entity called business existed? Traders were recorded conducting their commerce in the first acknowledged history book of the world, The Histories by Herodotus, written in 420 B.C. As time moved along to today, the manner of business has changed. For most businesses today, a relatively free market exists, devoid of monopolies and government-induced preferential treatment. The business environment that exists is due to the survival of the fittest. It is difficult to write about how things should work if the deck is already stacked, but we have had enough time in this free market, say 50 years, to see that business is working better than before, yet it is not working so well. Most people in most jobs are not happy. Reports vary. From 42% to 75% of people are not pleased to be in their jobs, and if they are not happy at the vocation that occupies 8 hours per day for most of the year, something is wrong. It is wrong for other reasons: Companies having learned how to do things right, still cannot stay on top of their game. Individuals learn from experience; they just get better much as does a fine wine. Yet, experienced companies teeter and fall on a somewhat regular basis. Look at the shops on your favourite street. How many have changed in the past five years? (Hint: Read fail in place of changed.)

By the way, small business, despite its smallness, dominates the employment scene. In Canada (and similarly in other countries), small business employs far more people than does big business. In my general survey, a further myth of most respondents suggested that business runs at about 30% net profit. How wonderful if it were true. But it is not. A look at America’s largest companies during a recent 5-year span and during a similar span 25 years ago show that profits of the big successful companies lurk at around 4 to 7% of sales in a good year and much less in bad times.

1.3 Profits

I, active in business, a leader and thinker, like to begin my discussions about profits before a business audience with the proposition that making profits CANNOT be the sole goal of an enterprise, nor can increasing shareholder value be the sole objective of an enterprise.

I do explain that making money—profits and increasing shareholder value—should be some of the goals of an enterprise, and extremely important ones at that. It’s all a matter of balance, but an enterprise has to have a purpose other than money. The founders know it and the early employees know it. However, as time marches on, people lose sight of the original purpose, and the myth of profits seems to raise its head and take precedence as the company’s noblest aim.

Besides, as indicated above, business continually demonstrates its in ability to make profits at all. Even governments are waking up to that fact by shifting their revenue sources from taxation of dwindling profits to taxations of sales (applying value-added taxes in one form or another). Yes, profits are needed by businesses, very much so, but they remain elusive.

1.4 Compiling Facts and Forming Conclusions

The question of how to make business work much better across the board has plagued business intellectuals for years. So, many such people set about to offer their perspectives on why the current business model doesn’t work, why 85% of new businesses die in the first five years and why around 58% of successful firms can’t seem to keep it together for very long. They gather facts, assemble information, congregate with peers to look at, assess and analyze the data. Then they write a book. These books are valuable as they bring so much information together in one place and offer the results for everyone to see. Let’s look at a few of them:

• Who Moved My Cheese? – Spencer Johnson

• Good to Great – Jim Collins

• In Search of Excellence – Tom Peters

• What (really) works – Nitin Nohria, William Joyce, & Bruce Roberson

The authors and social scientists offer advice from the assembly of facts and the arrival at conclusions that are quite logical based on the empirical data. They answer the question by looking at what the successful firms collectively have done to reach the positive results posted in the public records. Therefore, you probably should follow that advice. I certainly have; there is plenty of worthwhile information to be taken from these documents.

Yet, I have trouble with them, regarding one or more conclusions arrived at.¹ The answer in the specific book may be right, but the reason articulated is, in my opinion, often wrong.² And sometimes, the answer itself is wrong or at least it flies in the face of the fundamentals presented in the pages of this monograph. Why that is so, is open to conjecture. Perhaps the authors themselves may never have played the game by getting into the trenches. (My analogous example is the armchair quarterback sitting before the TV, assembling information on quarterbacks year after year, putting it all together and then writing a book on what makes a good quarterback without themselves ever having played the position or the game.)

It reminds me of James Watson’s comment concerning the life partner, Odile, of Francis Crick, Watson’s co-discoverer of DNA. Odile opined that gravity went only three miles high into the sky. If one observes that airplanes fly, one could surmise that airplanes appear to be no longer bound by gravity, as perhaps Odile may have. That is, if one has a set of observations and then sets out to explain why those observations lead to further behaviours – without probing the fundamentals – it is amazing what conclusions one can draw.

I am not here to criticize these books or the authors. They have filled an invaluable role; I applaud them, have discovered much from them and often refer their works to others. However, they have gaps. I am here to move from the abstract to the concrete, to add information and to enhance current findings. I hope that this book will fill in some of those gaps for you.

————————————————————

1 Separate papers discussing some of these differences are available from the author.

2 The proof is that a few years after publication of the book, some of the companies presented as examples of business success began to seriously falter.

________________________________________

1.5 Good Books that Struggle with the Questions (and Answers)

On a deeper, more philosophical level, some authors struggle with the direction in which our society appears to be heading. They are asking the same probing questions about the success of human endeavours (although a focus on societal distress has prompted most of these intellectual searches). They leave their ponderings for the reader, hoping that among the participants some answers will start to appear. The readings that have caught my attention and praise are:

• Leadership and the New Science – Margaret Wheatley

• The Spirit Level – Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett

• A Fair Country – John Ralston Saul

• Champlain’s Dream – David Hackett Fischer

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

A. Leadership and the New Science – Margaret Wheatley

More and more forward thinkers are acknowledging and accepting the wisdom encompassed in the concepts termed New Science of Management³ as espoused by Dr. Margaret Wheatley. The popularity of and demand for Dr. Wheatley as a speaker attest to the growing curiosity about her ideas. Her precepts contrast with the prevailing thinking of modern society in which the emphasis remains on orderliness, command-and-control, and top-down thinking in business, universities and governments. Unfortunately, Dr. Wheatley seems to be viewed by all too many leaders as a futurist, unreal today, when in fact, her position is current,