Dirty Rotten Strategies
How We Trick Ourselves and Others into Solving the Wrong Problems Precisely
By: Ian Mitroff, Abraham Silvers
Published: November 2009
Format: Hardcover, 192pp
ISBN-13: 9780804759960
ISBN-10: 0804759960
Publisher: Stanford University Press
"What we need are the right answers to the right problems, and not wasted effort on getting the right answers to the wrong problems", write authors Ian I. Mitroff and Abraham Silvers, in their important and thought provoking book Dirty Rotten Strategies: How We Trick Ourselves and Others into Solving the Wrong Problems Precisely. The authors demonstrate how people convince themselves that they are solving the right problem, when the opposite is true. At the same time, the book describes how various interest groups, governments, academia, the media, and corporations attempt deliberately to impose the wrong questions for solution.
Abraham Silvers and Ian Mitroff provide both the philosophical and logical background to the difficult and often messy issues of problem formulation and solution. They point out that what they call Type Three Errors and Type Four Errors are prevalent in business, government, and in society as a whole. A Type Three Error is one where the person deludes themselves that they have found the right problem, even if it's precisely the wrong one. The more serious Type Four Error is very often seen in business and government, and involves imposing the wrong problem and solution on others. The authors believe that people are susceptible to these dangerous errors through social conditioning caused in large part by the educational system, the media, and political biases. The very nature of these institutions, and how they perceive problems and solutions, leads people to solve the wrong problems very well.
Ian Mitroff (photo left) and Abraham Silvers delve into detail as to how the education system presents simple exercises as if they were real problems. The result is students leave the academia believing that complex problems have one correct and easy to discover solution. The authors consider the media to be turning reality into a version of unreality, where false problems are given neatly packaged solutions, that feed into even more lack of reality. At the same time, science and religion are misused to formulate the wrong problems and to result in the wrong solutions. The framing of problems by business leaders and politicians are also Type Four Errors, as their often incorrect assumptions about the nature of a complicated problem, into a simple yet wrong solution. The authors warn against listening to anyone who attempts to define a problem in only one way, that results in only one solution, as all real problems contain many issues and involve many people.
For me, the power of the book is how Ian Mitroff and Abraham Silvers understand the critical importance of properly defining the right problem, and provide a powerful set of criteria for doing so, in a logical and unbiased way. Solving the wrong problem well can very very often make the real and more fundamental problem even worse. The authors recognize how institutions from schools and the media, to business and government, create the social, institutional, spiritual and ethical framework of assumptions that lead to solving the wrong problems. The authors take the position that very often these framing and imposing of the wrong questions are intentional, to serve an agenda. Ian Mitroff and Abraham Silvers guide the reader through an intensive study of how these wrong questions are formulated, and how to ask the right questions to solve the right problem.
I highly recommend the insightful and well reasoned book Dirty Rotten Strategies: How We Trick Ourselves and Others into Solving the Wrong Problems Precisely by Abraham Silvers and Ian I. Mitroff, to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how the wrong problems are given a precise solution that fails to solve the real problem. The authors describe the complexity, and interconnectedness of problems, and how people's underlying assumptions are influenced by society ranging from the education system to the churches to government and business. Through a culture of seeking unreality, people have developed biases that cause the wrong questions to be asked, resulting in the wrong problems being given precise solutions.
Read the brilliant and must read book Dirty Rotten Strategies: How We Trick Ourselves and Others into Solving the Wrong Problems Precisely by Ian I. Mitroff and Abraham Silvers, and learn how to avoid the frequent Type Three and Type Four Errors that are so much a part of business and government activity. Discover how to recognize the deliberate framing of questions to result in an a predetermined and often ideological solution. By understanding how these errors are made, you can help define the right questions, resulting in the best solution for everyone.
