Peter looks down at his high school examination results transcript for the first time. It is not a pretty picture. He had been praying hard the results that would peer back at him would be different but he also knew deep down that it may not. He had been dreading this moment. It has arrived.
Still, he had wished for otherwise. He is a bright student. But it had not been an easy past few years. He had just lost his older sibling to a debilitating illness. They had been very close to each other. He is also dauntingly aware his parents are not close to each other and fears they may find other partners and break up the family and sanctity that he seeks. What would that mean as a family? Where can he seek counsel? Will he be intruding? It bothers him.
Turning his eyes back at the results, he knows he can do much better than what he sees. The reality is dawning at him. He is facing it squarely. These results will not help him get into his dream course at the university of his choice. It hurts him. What should he do now?
Suddenly he remembers that he has to announce these results to his family. He has been known to be the one with a sound head on his shoulders. But now. With this. What would they think of him? Maybe they would not ask. He consoles himself.
But they did. He chose to keep quiet. Perhaps they will understand. He hopes. But meanwhile, he needs to come up with a strategy. Fast. So that his peers do not leave him behind.
He thinks.
He needs to get grades. Good grades. Fast. What subjects will help him do so? French. Perhaps. Grades that would allow him to put his foot through the door of a tertiary institution. What can he do so that he can catch up with his peers in the shortest possible time? He has the coming summer months to do so.
What jobs are out there that he should prepare for? He really did like the sounds of the field of nautical engineering. He had really enjoyed seeing and fiddling in the cockpit of a cruise ship during one of his summer vacations. It had made him feel happy and come alive. And he loves his Maths and Physics. But he has been told that manufacturing here is not a big deal in terms of jobs. What should he do? How should he decide?
Are his days of plain sailing through life over? Will he face the same dilemmas when he is out there in the big wide world looking for a job? With only four jobs available for every ten working-age population, what will become of his chances with not-so-great grades? The supply of labor is now outstripping the demand for labor. Will jobs become too slim for his picking?
He will need to figure this out. He needs time. But does he have the time?
We all know a story like this.
One way or another.
And so. Here is the situation (Click on the link to the case study). You are now charged as the Head of this State. What would you do to turn around the situation?
Run, you say? Oh, you did not say that. Good! Invite more investors, locals as well as foreigners, to invest in the country?
Your predecessors have done that. Poured trillions for decades with the help of past heads of states and a cabinet of citizen representatives. Yet, widespread unemployment today, has grown to prevail at 60%! How did that happen?
You say perhaps “they” have not done enough. That you will do more than them. That is possible. For how long would you do more of the same? What went wrong? What else could we do?
Some measures are drastic and feel more like a bitter pill to swallow. But I hope it will make the tough actions we would take at a later stage become easier to bear with. So here goes.
1. “EXPORT” UNEMPLOYMENT
Don’t have solid agricultural and manufacturing bases? Finding it too difficult to build them? Well, here’s a strategy—though said tongue-in-cheek—to ease the short-term pain of unemployment: continue exporting unemployment at the same rate you’ve been importing manufactured goods and raw materials. That way, the unemployed will follow the money being spent on goods produced outside the country (or region) but consumed within. While this may momentarily relieve some pressure, it’s a reflection of the deeper economic challenge that needs addressing.
2 “MATCH” BIRTHS TODAY TO JOB CREATION TOMORROW
If we’re confident we’ll be able to create more jobs tomorrow, then by all means, go ahead and multiply. But if we’re not sure… well, you get the idea.
An unchecked population growth leads to rising unemployment, which eventually becomes difficult to manage.
The supply of labor isn’t driven by our education system alone—it’s determined by birth rates, from twenty years ago. That’s the time for a young person to mature and be ready for the job market.
Matching the decisions made by families today with boardroom decisions twenty years from now isn’t easy. But here’s the key: the same people who bring children into this world are the ones responsible for creating the jobs those kids will need in the future. And no, I’m not talking about divine intervention—it’s you and me.
We need to believe we can build businesses that will generate jobs for the next generation. Companies shouldn’t just be a means to hustle for profit today or a temporary shell to discard once we’ve met our immediate needs. They should be about creating a legacy and shaping the future for our children.
So, the question is, do you believe you can do that?
3 NATIONAL & COMMUNITY DIALOGUES AS FAMILIES Q: What allows industries to grow?
The choices we make as families and as a nation are deeply interconnected.
Decisions about acquiring skills for agriculture and manufacturing begin within families and households. However, these decisions are often shaped by perceptions of what is happening “out there,” rather than personal experience. It feels distant and unrelated to our immediate lives.
If we believe that our population lacks the skills needed for manufacturing, and as families, we feel the country isn’t doing enough to create jobs in that sector, we find ourselves in a lose-lose situation.
To move forward, we need to clarify our intentions, address the concerns, and develop a strategy to share accurate information as a nation. In today’s world, where countries can do grocery shopping online, solving this issue may not be as challenging as we believe.
Community Dialogues on household decisions and impact on national unemployment and vice-versa
4 CONSTRUCT REGIONAL MATRIX-ED GOODS VALUE CHAINS MAP
Get your foundation in order. Know your goals and pursue them with clarity.
Understand the interconnected structure of raw material supply chains driven by regional customer needs and develop strong agricultural and manufacturing sectors by following these steps:
Focus on what customers demand, not just the products you currently have. Build a comprehensive value chain map.
Identify how goods complement each other to efficiently meet end-customer needs in local, regional, and global markets.
Assess what resources are available and what is lacking.
Leave aside the question of who holds specific resources for now; this becomes relevant once the map is fully formed.
Pinpoint critical processes within the chains that, if absent, could halt production and disrupt the supply chains.
Don’t wait for other regions to develop their maps and then approach you for manufacturing. By doing so, you risk losing the influence and value needed to manage the process.
Co-develop this map on an ongoing basis with private sector organizations. Bring them on board. Present the reality. Ask what they want to do. Do not push their responses to another organization. Keep the conversations going. Do not let anyone think that the government will fund them. Ask what can all do to grow the nation together. How can they collaborate with each other and respond to the market demand and forces while creating employment for more?
Once the mapping is complete, you’ll have a roadmap to align your efforts and drive progress, both as a nation and as a region.
5 ALIGN AND BUILD HUMAN RESOURCES
Align and, where necessary, develop human resource skills for the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, with a focus on building both foundational and advanced competencies in English, Mathematics, and Science—particularly in Physics and Chemistry—across the nation. This will enhance resilience and inclusivity within these two critical sectors.
6 BUILD UP THE PYRAMID OF THE ECONOMY
Establish coordinated corporations within the agricultural (crop, plant, and raw material production) and manufacturing sub-sectors, ensuring alignment with the regional industry value chain matrix and scheduling.
Economies that rely heavily on extraction industries will have large pockets of unemployment that continue to persist in the nation. These industries gross high returns but they do so by employing fewer people and more machines to keep the costs of operations under control and therefore ensure the growth of the industry. This way the GDP would certainly look good (but not the food on our tables, which is the real GDP).
Machines do not create jobs for the unemployment rates.
Plant and animal-based primary production and manufacturing economic sectors when well-developed have greater potential for creating and absorbing significant employment. Extraction-based industries are typically technology-driven and have a lower capacity for the employment of human resources.
The nation is shifting its focus to production, particularly in plants. It will learn to mitigate climate effects one country at a time. This approach would allow the region to produce consistently throughout the year. It will keep the manufacturing sector humming.
Invite regional and global industry leaders. Alternatively, incentivize and groom local captains of industry with long-term overseas stints. These leaders can lead, chart, and build the sub-sectors from the ground up. This includes efforts within households and education sectors.
THE SHOCKING REVELATION OF WHY THE LESS DEVELOPED NATIONS STRUGGLE TO SHRUG OFF ITS DEVELOPING STATUS. DISCOVER THAT IT HAS NOT LOST ITS POWER BASE TO TRANSFORM ITSELF TO LIFT ITS STATUS. THE SAME POWER BASE THAT HAS TAKEN IT TO WHERE IT IS TODAY!
In the last 100 years, has any country gone from being “developing” to being “developed”?
Yes, there have been several countries that have transitioned from being classified as “developing” to “developed” over the past 100 years. These transitions are usually based on economic growth, improvements in infrastructure, advancements in technology, and overall development indicators. For example, developed countries have higher life expectancies, with an average of 75 years for men and 82 years for women. Developing countries may have lower life expectancies, with an average of 63 years for men and 67 years for women.
However, developed nations do become “underdeveloped”/ ”developing” not because they lose some “development points” or anything like that, but most of the time because the rest of the world moves on without them. It can also be a result of severe political instability (Lybia), epidemics (China and Europe during the bubonic plague), severe natural disasters (Haiti), and war(Syria).
In traditional cultures like those of the San, nature is indivisible. Humans were never “users” of nature—they were custodians. They didn’t live nomadic lives merely for convenience, but out of deep respect for the sacred balance of ecosystems. Nature, in this view, is not composed of separate, extractable elements—air, water, land, or minerals—but an interwoven whole.
And when nature speaks, it is often not in ways we recognize. But nature does speak. It speaks through floods and droughts, through collapsing bee populations and shifting animal migrations. And, most poetically and urgently, it speaks through the elephants.
II. Reflections on the CBNRM 2025 Bill: What’s Missing?
We acknowledge and appreciate Dr. Douglas Rasbash for his detailed analysis titled “Debating CBNRM 2025: Trophy Hunting, Community Benefits, and the Illusion of Transformation”, published in The Botswana Gazette on 30 July 2025. His reflections interrogate the bill’s limited scope and challenge its claims to transformation. His work opens space for deeper discussion on how Botswana should approach resource governance with deeper layers to consider:
1. Token Transformation Without Structural Change
The bill tweaks the 2007 framework but does not challenge entrenched hierarchies. Central authorities retain control. Communities are treated as recipients—not stakeholders.
2. Trophy Hunting Revenue vs. Real Benefit
Year after year, trophy hunting revenue flows fail to trickle down to local villages. Communities bear the burden of wildlife conflict, yet remain impoverished.
3. Absence of Ecological or Economic Vision
There is no mention of carbon markets, eco-tourism models, or sustainable enterprises. Innovation is absent. Nature is still commodified, not regenerated. This is a good point and we concur.
4. Fragmented Implementation Across Ministries
Lack of cross-ministerial planning weakens delivery. The vision is still sectoral, not systemic. This is a further good point and we concur.
5. Lack of Rights-Based Framing
The bill does not position nature or communities as rights-bearing participants in governance. It lacks empathy, imagination, and transformative ambition.
In short, the bill “enshrines procedure but sidesteps power.”
III. Poaching, Elephant Gender Skew & Evolutionary Response Leading to Human-Wildlife Conflicts
What if nature could speak—not through human proxies, but through its own lived response?
Elephants, among the most sentient of Earth’s species, do exactly that. In the face of man-made threats, they don’t protest or petition. Instead, they adapt—through demographic shifts, reproductive changes, and even evolutionary transformation.
Scientific studies reveal that heavy poaching disproportionately removes adult tusked males first, driven by the ivory trade. Initially, this creates a skew toward male-biased herds. But as mature males become scarce, poachers begin targeting matriarchs as well. Over time, sex ratios tip in the opposite direction. In some regions, female elephants now outnumber males significantly.
Nature recalibrates.
Under sustained threat, elephant populations respond with what researchers call “baby boom” behavior. Birth rates increase. Female calves begin to dominate the cohorts. In time, nature goes further—selecting for tusklessness in females, genetically altering the population to survive human violence. Nature literally reshapes itself to stay alive.
🧬 A Note on Reproductive Signaling in Nature
But nature doesn’t only respond at the level of population structure or visible behavior. It encodes survival at the reproductive level, too.
In mammals—including elephants and humans—offspring sex is determined by the sperm: males produce both X- and Y-chromosome-carrying sperm, while females provide only the X. Some researchers suggest that ecological pressure and heightened sexual activity in males may shift sperm composition over time—initially favoring Y-bearing sperm, then increasingly favoring the slower moving X-bearing sperm as reproductive frequency rises. Simultaneously, females may adjust the timing and frequency of conception in ways that amplify population regrowth.
Whether or not the chromosomal shift is scientifically settled, the broader truth holds: when under threat, nature increases reproductive output. It often responds with female-biased cohorts. This is not a random pattern. It is a feedback loop—woven through biology, behavior, and ecological memory.
🐘 Nature’s Rebound Is Misread as a Problem
Yet here is the paradox: when elephants reproduce in this way—swiftly, strategically, in response to loss—it appears, to the outside observer, as an inexplicable boom. The herds grow. Their presence expands. They encroach on grazing pastures and forage across fields of crops.
People complain of destruction. Fields are trampled. Livelihoods threatened. And few connect the dots. That this “boom” is not excess—it is compensation. It is nature trying to fill the space we ourselves emptied. The link between the human decision to reduce elephant populations and the elephants’ drive to restore them is lost to most.
The boom is not the problem. It is the response. The real issue is that we forced nature into a corner, and now we are surprised when she tries to push back.
🌿 A Final Feedback
There is one more signal nature sends: the speed of this regeneration grows with each cycle. As more females dominate the birth cohorts, the population’s capacity to rebound increases. Each generation accelerates the return. And the pressure that leads elephants into human settlements, crop fields, and grazing lands is not one of malice—but of necessity.
And here lies the core insight: when humans interfere less with elephants for economic gain, elephants interfere less with humans economically. The equation is ecological. The relationship is reciprocal.
Nature should not be merely “represented” by humans, but recognized as having its own agency—something traditional custodianship honored.
Modern frameworks treat nature as divisible (air, water, minerals) and commodified for use, not preserved as an indivisible system.
The state is held responsible for common good decisions; communities, unless guided by deeper ecological ethics, may not always act for broader collective outcomes.
This diverges from dominant policy frameworks in the following ways:
IV. My View vs. Policy Orthodoxy: A Table of Dissonance
Aspect
Your View
Mainstream/ National View
Dissonance
Ontology of Nature
Nature has agency and voice; humans are custodians.
Nature is a resource for human use, managed by institutions.
Nature’s rights and feedbacks are ignored in governance.
Governance Responsibility
States must act for common good; local communities should also be accountable beyond their borders.
Empowering communities without clear responsibility to the broader system.
Elephants respond to unnatural threats by shifting reproduction—nature “speaks” through behavior.
Wildlife is managed based on human needs and economic models.
The ecological meaning of species behavior is not considered in policy.
Transformation Definition
Requires fundamentally new relationships with nature.
Often procedural—focused on revenue sharing or institutional realignment.
Technocratic approaches miss the relational and spiritual transformation.
Traditional Knowledge
Custodianship cultures respected the indivisible nature of ecosystems.
Traditional views are often not structurally embedded.
Modern policy tokenizes indigenous voices rather than re-rooting practice.
V. Nature Is Not Divisible—and Never Was
In traditional worldviews, particularly those of the San and other nomadic or semi-nomadic communities, nature was never regarded as divisible. Land, water, flora, fauna, minerals, and the landscapes that shaped them were seen as one living system. To divide them—to draw borders through rivers, to build fences and walls, or to extract minerals without restoring the land—was unthinkable. It was not just about ethics; it was about survival.
These ecosystems were seen not only as resources but as regenerative companions. Forests thrived because the land was part of an unbroken ecological logic—air moved freely, seeds scattered, animals migrated, and water knew no boundaries.
Modern policy frameworks, however, fragment this logic. They assign ownership and utility, isolate resources from each other, and regulate nature in silos. Yet restoration—and indeed growth—is only possible when the system is whole. You cannot regenerate a forest by saving just the trees.
VI. Why Humans Once Moved—and Why That Matters Now
Traditionally, humans did not remain in fixed settlements. Like elephant herds or migrating buffalo, they moved with the land’s rhythm—allowing grazed pastures and riverbanks to recover. It was not just mobility for survival—it was ecological consciousness.
When humans stayed too long in one place, the land could no longer replenish itself. Food sources dwindled, water became scarce, and diseases took hold. Nomadism was not a primitive lifestyle—it was an adaptive strategy rooted in ecological respect.
This logic, however, began to shift as human settlements expanded and infrastructure brought nature to people, rather than the other way around. As populations grew and natural resources were made artificially accessible through trade, infrastructure, or aid, the idea of indivisible nature gave way to commodified, divisible “resources.”
Today, the consequences of this shift are clear. Nature is less able to recover. Land that once supported thriving ecosystems is now drying up. Desertification—the slow, often irreversible loss of biodiversity and ecological function—is nature’s way of leaving the land. The air, the water, the microorganisms, the seeds—they move on.
Modern populations cannot return to nomadism. But this makes our responsibility greater, not less. Now more than ever, humans must become builders of ecosystems rather than users of resources. We must restore and unify what we have fragmented.
VII. From Divide and Rule to Regenerate and Belong
The impulse to divide—land, water, people, responsibilities—is often a strategy born of scarcity. Where livelihoods are fragile and communities compete for dwindling opportunities, fragmentation becomes a means of control. The governance logic follows suit: divide to manage, divide to rule, divide to extract.
But this logic dissolves when people have meaningful, place-based work. When communities are rooted in dignified livelihoods—in regenerative agriculture, in value-adding manufacturing, in stewarding the lands they depend on—the pressure to extract weakens. The need to commodify nature, or to privatize what should remain whole, diminishes.
As communities gain employment in sectors that regenerate rather than exhaust, the old need to divide—to conquer nature, to compete with neighbors, to extract at the expense of ecosystems—begins to lose its grip. This is not just an economic transition. It is a political and moral one. A movement from exploitation to belonging.
Where people can build their futures, they no longer need to divide the commons. They can begin instead to rebuild the whole.
VIII. Towards a New Imagination: Nature as Kin
To address the ecological and moral blind spots in current models, we must reframe:
Recognize Nature’s Agency Introduce rights-of-nature frameworks—not to anthropomorphize nature, but to give legal standing to species, water bodies, and ecosystems.
Invest in Post-Wildlife Economies As rural communities access agricultural and manufacturing opportunities, dependence on trophy hunting and extractive tourism will naturally subside.
Elevate Traditional Custodianship as Governance The knowledge systems of the San and others are not heritage—they are governance blueprints. Embed them structurally.
Rebuild Inter-Ministerial Accountability Around Ecology Align national planning around ecological zones and systems, not ministerial silos.
IX. A Note on Inconsistencies
We accept that this position is a much harder line than that of Dr. Rasbash’s. While his article considers the bill potentially redeemable, this view challenges the foundation of its logic. Still, the divergence reflects the richness of the debate.
We also note one technical inconsistency requiring clarification: elephant sex ratios are said to skew male initially, then female. Clarification and timeline data will help deepen this important insight.
X. Conclusion: The Elephant Is Speaking
CBNRM debates have treated nature as a background actor—something to be divided, allocated, and regulated. But nature is responding. Elephants are shifting their genetic makeup. Bees are disappearing. Rivers are drying.
We must learn to govern not just for nature, but with nature.
Transformation with a capital T means:
Recognizing nature’s feedback.
Rediscovering the governance ethics of traditional custodianship.
Transitioning from extractive economies to regenerative systems.
Letting the elephant have a seat at the table.
Let us not debate in silence. Let us not legislate blindly. Let us listen to those who have always lived with the land—and to the land itself.
XI. A Final Note: Listening from the Other Side of the Pendulum
This article, while engaging with the CBNRM 2025 Bill, has deliberately chosen a different standpoint. It does not speak from the perspective of policy, nor from human interest alone. It takes the stand of nature—and of wildlife—and views the policy debates as part of a larger system in which humans are not the only actors.
The emphasis on elephants, on demographic shifts, and on nature’s feedback is intentional. It reflects a pendulum swing—a rebalancing of attention toward voices that are too often left out of our governance landscape. The voices of species, of land, of watersheds, of the quiet systems that hold our futures in place.
This is not the usual way we reason. Not in boardrooms. Not in legislative drafts. Not in community meetings. But it is a way we must begin to learn, if we are to govern with wisdom beyond self-interest.
So we leave you with this:
Supposing elephants could be in the room—and we can hear their voices—what do you think would change? What decisions might we reach if we treated them not as background, but as new members at the table?
(Although the elephants might argue they are not new at all—we are simply the latest arrivals.)
Facts to Note:
Population. At the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 – 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 – 40,000 wild Asian elephants.
Most captives are endangered Asian elephants; African bush elephants and African forest elephants are less amenable to training (quite possibly testament to a historical hostile relationship between man and elephants). Animal rights organizations estimate there are 15,000 to 20,000 elephants in captivity worldwide.
That brings the total number of elephants today to about 500,000. Half a million.
Level of Poaching in southern Africa not including figures from Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Angola and ZimbabweSystemic Causal Structure of the Human-Elephant Conflict
That is … until you see them return to the lands and vegetation we have encroached into, when we settled in their habitat.
When elephants leave their habitats for their watering holes, for however long, it does not mean they have resettled.
And so, it becomes hard for us to imagine the way a child intuitively understands these gentle giants. Instead, …
When we think of elephants, we conjure up images of majesty and aggression!
ARTICLE OUTLINE:
Introduction
Basic Facts about elephants
The impact elephants have on the ecology
Historical reasons for the demise of elephants
FAQS ABOUT HUNTING:
What is fuelling human’s obsession for hunting?
Why men trophy hunt?
FAQs ABOUT POACHING:
About the elephants
About the tusk
About the poachers and the trade
About the end consumer
Beijing master ivory carvers cling to their trade
Who is the silent voice and what does it say?
Population. At the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 – 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 – 40,000 wild Asian elephants. Most captives are endangered Asian elephants; African bush elephants and African forest elephants are less amenable to training. Animal rights organizations estimate there are 15,000 to 20,000 elephants in captivity worldwide. That brings the total number of elephants today to about 500,000. Half a million.
The real question is, what would you do if it had been the global human population that has been decimated by up to three quarters of its numbers by another species? And you are left with a quarter of you!
INTRODUCTION
Elephants are among the most intelligent of the creatures with whom we share the planet, with complex consciousnesses that are capable of strong emotions. Across Africa they have inspired respect from the people that share the landscape with them, giving them a strong cultural significance. As icons of the continent elephants are tourism magnets, attracting funding that helps protect wilderness areas. They are also keystone species, playing an important role in maintaining the biodiversity of the ecosystems in which they live.
Symbolic Elephant Meaning. … Symbolic elephant meaning deals primarily with strength, honor, stability and tenacity, among other attributes. To the Hindu way of thought, the elephant is found in the form of Ganesha who is the god of luck, fortune, protection and is a blessing upon all new projects.
What does elephant symbolize?
Many African cultures revere the African Elephant as a symbol of strength and power. It is also praised for its size, longevity, stamina, mental faculties, cooperative spirit, and loyalty. South Africa, uses elephant tusks in their coat of arms to represent wisdom, strength, moderation and eternity.
Elephants generally do not have predators (animals that eat them) due to their massive size. Newborn elephants are however vulnerable to attacks from lions,tigers, and hyenas. The biggest danger to elephants are humans; elephants have been hunted for their tusks to near extinction in some cases.Oct 8, 2015
Yet, today they stand at the brink on its way of being wiped out. Paving the way for the last man standing. The man.
Yet, did you know that ….
What elephants are afraid of?
But the elephant’s fear has more to do with the element of surprise than the mouse itself. Theories abound that elephants are afraid of mice because the tiny creatures nibble on their feet or can climb up into their trunks.Jun 1, 2016
Are elephants really scared of bees?
Elephants are the largest beasts alive on land today. Yet, these goliaths are afraid of bees, researchers have discovered. The giants flee when they hear the buzz of a beeswarm. Their fear could be used to help protect them.
SURPRISED?
And so the images we had conjured in our minds of their undisputed majesty and world domination (and possible aggression), true?
So, be calm. Love an elephant and learn to live among the gentle giants if, that is, you still want to live on their lands.
“Because he (the human) just comes for the money, he does not have any compassion or love for the elephant. And so he does not want to be involved in taking care of the elephant. So the elephant will get poorer and poorer in condition.”
“I look into their eyes and I can see they have suffered. They can’t speak.”
“They never knew that elephants can show happiness. That they have humor and can smile.”
“They accept her into her herd as a kindred spirit after suffering so many years of abuse. Perhaps they are relieved and surprised to find such human kindness still exists.”
Blog Author’s Note:
As you read the article, notice the elephant (what we know about them: the facts, the emotions, the money trail, the larger-than-life images this animal conjures in our minds) that this majestic animal has brought into the room … and then, notice what is the “elephant that is not in the room”?
What do you think that is? There right there, is our leverage.
BASIC FACTS ABOUT ELEPHANTS
Habitat loss is one of the key threats facing elephants. Many climate change projections indicate that key portions of elephants’ habitat will become significantly hotter and drier, resulting in poorer foraging conditions and threatening calf survival. Increasing conflict with human populations taking over more and more elephant habitat and poaching for ivory are additional threats that are placing the elephant’s future at risk.
Of the two species, African elephants are divided into two subspecies (savannah and forest), while the Asian elephant is divided into four subspecies (Sri Lankan, Indian, Sumatran and Borneo). Asian elephants have been very important to Asian culture for thousands of years – they have been domesticated and are used for religious festivals, transportation and to move heavy objects.
Diet
Staples: Grasses, leaves, bamboo, bark, roots. Elephants are also known to eat crops like banana and sugarcane which are grown by farmers. Adult elephants eat 300-400 lbs of food per day.
Population
At the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 – 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 – 40,000 wild Asian elephants.
Range
African savannah elephants are found in savannah zones in 37 countries south of the Sahara Desert. African forest elephants inhabit the dense rainforests of west and central Africa. The Asian elephant is found in India, Sri Lanka, China and much of Southeast Asia.
Behaviour
Elephants form deep family bonds and live in tight matriarchal family groups of related females called a herd. The herd is led by the oldest and often largest female in the herd, called a matriarch. Herds consist of 8-100 individuals depending on terrain and family size. When a calf is born, it is raised and protected by the whole matriarchal herd. Males leave the family unit between the ages of 12-15 and may lead solitary lives or live temporarily with other males.
Elephants are extremely intelligent animals and have memories that span many years. It is this memory that serves matriarchs well during dry seasons when they need to guide their herds, sometimes for tens of miles, to watering holes that they remember from the past. They also display signs of grief, joy, anger and play.
Recent discoveries have shown that elephants can communicate over long distances by producing a sub-sonic rumble that can travel over the ground faster than sound through air. Other elephants receive the messages through the sensitive skin on their feet and trunks. It is believed that this is how potential mates and social groups communicate.
Reproduction
Mating Season: Mostly during the rainy season.
Gestation: 22 months. Litter size: 1 calf (twins rare). Calves weigh between 200-250 lbs at birth. At birth, a calf’s trunk has no muscle tone, therefore it will suckle through its mouth. It takes several months for a calf to gain full control of its trunk.
Elephants are the keystone species of their habitat.
The planet earth is inhabited by diverse array of living organisms such as microorganisms, plants, animals and human beings which collectively constitute the biodiversity. Each and every element of the living component of the system has its own role, either positive or negative, to play as a system component. So preservation and conservation of living organisms, whether they are tiny or large, become immense important in playing beneficial role in maintaining biodiversity.
Mega-herbivorous animal such as elephant has major impact on the terrestrial ecosystems in which they live and thus on the animals that depend on these habitats. Elephant can be referred as “keystone species” because it facilitates:
Feeding by other herbivores that disperse seeds and supports large assemblages of invertebrates, such as dung beetles, and
Lower plants such as algae and fungi apart from enriching soil nutrients through dung piles.
These algae and fungi are preferred nutrient plants for some reptiles such as monitor lizard and star tortoise in the semiarid tropical forests.
Dung beetle accumulation attracts many insectivorous birds.
Dung deposition into water holes is being benefited to the Pisces and amphibians.
Wherever they live, elephants leave dung that is full of seeds from the many plants they eat. When this dung is deposited the seeds are sown and grow into new grasses, bushes and trees, boosting the health of the savannah ecosystem.
Seed dispersal through alimentary canal induces germination and survival capacity of the seedlings to maintain the forest heterogeneity; some species rely entirely upon elephants for seed dispersal.
Elephant also does some of the silvicultural practices such as
Creation of paths in dense forest. When forest elephants eat, they create gaps in the vegetation. These gaps allow new plants to grow and create pathways for other smaller animals to use.
On the savannahs, elephants feeding on tree sprouts and shrubs help to keep the plains open and able to support the plains game that inhabit these ecosystems.
Maintenance of grazing lawns and height of the trees and thinning in thick vegetation cover to keep the sustainable utility of the forest.
Identification of subsoil water and natural salt licks through elephants’ strong sense is also shared by the other animals especially the herbivores for which intake of minerals from the natural soil is most important for many physiological activities.
During the dry season, elephants use their tusks to dig for water. This not only allows the elephants to survive in dry environments and when droughts strike, but also provides water for other animals that share harsh habitats.
The pachyderm (a very large mammal with thick skin, especially an elephant, rhinoceros, or hippopotamus) is under severe threat due to various conservation problems such as loss of habitat (see example below that of forest cover in Sumatra), habitat quality and corridors, reduction of home range, population increase, impact of developmental activities, human-elephant conflict issues and poaching for ivory. Among the factors, some of them may be responsible for major proportions, and some of them involve less proportion. But these are the reasons listed as conservation problems for the long-run conservation of elephants.
Historically, trade and capture are responsible for elephants’ demise
Since the Proboscidea originated 60 million years ago, the order has included some 10 families, 45 genera and 185 species and subspecies, in a spectacular diversity of forms. The African (Loxodonta africana and Loxodonta cyclotis) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) existing today are the sole remnants of that remarkable evolutionary radiation. Representing a tiny fraction of their former numbers, the living elephants survive in only small pockets of the land they once roamed. In many areas elephant populations have already gone extinct or are highly endangered.
Over centuries legal and illegal hunting (“poaching”) for the commercial ivory trade and, in Asia, the capture of elephants for human use, have been largely responsible for the elephant’s demise. The number of wild Asian elephants now comprise less than a tenth of all remaining elephants, and continue to decline in shrinking habitat. In Africa, elephants once inhabited the entire continent, from the Mediterranean down to its southern tip, but the ivory trade coupled with human expansion caused a continental decline in their numbers. By circa 1600 North Africa was devoid of elephants. In modern Africa, poaching for ivory has been fuelled by poverty, political instability and civil unrest coupled with the easy availability of arms. In recent history, between 1979 and 1989, Africa’s elephants underwent a dramatic and devastating decline, falling from approximately 1.3 million animals to an estimated 609,000. Human greed and rising prices of ivory were responsible for the appalling slaughter.
African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are imperiled by poaching and habitat loss. Despite global attention to the plight of elephants, their population sizes and trends are uncertain or unknown over much of Africa. To conserve this iconic species, conservationists need timely, accurate data on elephant populations.
There is an estimated population of 352,271 savannah elephants on study sites in 18 countries, representing approximately 93% of all savannah elephants in those countries. Elephant populations in survey areas with historical data show it has decreased by an estimated 144,000 from 2007 to 2014, and populations are currently shrinking by 8% per year continent-wide, primarily due to poaching. Though 84% of elephants occurred in protected areas, many protected areas had carcass ratios that indicated high levels of elephant mortality. Results of the GEC show the necessity of action to end the African elephants’ downward trajectory by preventing poaching and protecting habitat.
What is fuelling the obsession of trophy hunting poaching?
Why are savagery and violence so omnipresent among humans?
We suggest that hunting behaviour is fascinating and attractive, a desire that makes temporary deprivation from physical needs, pain, sweat, blood, and ultimately the willingness to kill tolerable and even appetitive.
Evolutionary development into the “perversion” of the urge to hunt humans, that is to say the transfer of this hunt to members of one’s own species, has been nurtured by the resultant advantage of personal and social power and dominance. While breakdown of the inhibition towards intra-specific killing would endanger any animal species, controlled inhibition was enabled in humans in that higher regulatory systems, such as frontal lobe-based executive functions, prevent the involuntary derailment of hunting behaviour.
If this control – such as in child soldiers for example – is not learnt, the brutality towards humans remains fascinating and appealing. Blood must flow in order to kill. It is hence an appetitive cue as is the struggling of the victim.
Hunting for men, more rarely for women, is fascinating and emotionally arousing with the parallel release of testosterone, serotonin and endorphins, which can produce feelings of euphoria and alleviate pain. Bonding and social rites (e.g. initiation) set up the contraints for both hunting and violent disputes. Children learn which conditions legitimate aggressive behaviour and which not. Big game hunting as well as attack of other communities is more successful in groups – men also perceive it as more pleasurable. This may explain the fascination with gladiatorial combat, violent computer games but also ritualized forms like football.
(Blog Author’s Note: And as such conjures notions such as the “last man standing” must necessarily therefore mean someone is more strong or witty than the rest who did not stay around to remain standing as he could. Therefore, as such (in conclusion) no one, not his mother or his wife say he is ‘therefore not man enough’ for her.)
WHY MEN TROPHY HUNT: SHOWING OFF AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHAME
Prominent evolutionary anthropologists (Brian Codding and Kristen Hawkes from the University of Utah) have studied hunter-gatherer populations for decades.
Interestingly, analyses of the types of animals hunter-gatherer men target are very similar in that they are often the largest animals in the landscape. Importantly, they are also animals with high ‘failure rates’. That is, men are likely to come home empty handed from hunting. This is very different from women hunters, who target smaller animals that they are more assured to acquire and bring home as food.
On that hunt, on a lake outside Tampa, I met Jay, a hugely successful New York photographer and author, who said, “I watched Romancing The Stone as a kid. In the movie, Michael Douglas kills a crocodile and turns it into a pair of cowboy boots. That’s what I’m here. I want to wear a pair of cowboy boots and to be able to say to my friends, ‘I killed these’”.
And kill them he did, from a flat-bottomed boat after he first harpooned it with a buoy tied to a rope so it couldn’t swim away, making Jay holler “this is like something out of Jaws!”
Men who target these large, difficult-to-acquire animals, therefore, signal to others that they can absorb the costs of an inefficient behaviour. It signals that they have high-quality underlying mental and physical characteristics to be able to absorb such costs.
This ‘costly signalling’ to which it’s referred in the evolutionary literature, provides a way for men to accrue status. And status is universally important for men to ward off competition and attract mates. (I’ll note here that hunter-gatherer populations consume the animals they kill, unlike most trophy hunters. In no way do I advocate any opposition to the ways in which Indigenous peoples earn their livelihood).
What are your major messages?
We believe this ‘costly signalling’ model applies equally well to trophy hunters from the developed world. By paying big bucks to trophy hunt, or even forgoing smaller individuals within populations to wait for chances at the very biggest, imposes costs on trophy hunters. And it’s prestigious to signal that you can absorb these costs. In other words, trophy hunters, whether they realize it or not, are likely hunting for status. It’s like driving a luxury car, though in this case the lives of animals are taken.
How do your findings extend and differ from what others have written about trophy hunting?
People, including me, were confused as to why men do this. Are they sick in the head? Bloodthirsty? Some believe that these are appropriate terms. For me, this evolutionary explanation goes deeper and asked, why did this behaviour evolve? We think we offer a good explanation.
Some might argue, ‘Well, if this is natural behaviour, then it’s justified’. I believe this is a dangerous argument referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. My colleague and mentor, Dr. Paul Paquet of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, makes this abundantly clear by reminding us, “Trophy hunting can neither be justified for being natural nor as an aid to help populations, given the enormous costs paid by individual animals – their lives.”
How might one apply what you found to put a stop to this reprehensible practice that some claim they do “in the name of conservation”?
One interesting observation post-Cecil (the lion’s death by trophy hunting) is that demand for lion hunting has declined owing to prohibitions on transporting the remains on planes, etc. If hunters cannot bring the trophies home to boast with, then they have no costly signal.
How many elephants are killed by poachers every year?
100 Elephants are killed per day. The U.N. says up to 100 elephants are being slaughtered a day in Africa by poachers taking part in the illegal ivory trade. Mar 19, 2015.
How many wild elephants are left in the world?
Population at the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 – 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 – 40,000 wild Asian elephants. That is a third or less than a third or even by as much as a quarter of the population of elephants that existed at the turn of the last century. Three-quarters of them have disappeared effectively.
Endangered Asian elephants
Asian elephants are even more endangered than African elephants — but the threat isn’t poaching so much as human encroachment. The Asian species is smaller than the African, and none of the females and only some of the males have tusks. While some are hunted for ivory or meat, most of the Asian elephants taken from the wild are not killed, but domesticated for zoos, safari tourism, or timber hauling. There are only about 30,000 remaining wild Asian elephants, while 15,000 live in captivity. The wild herds in India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are dwindling, too, as human development shrinks their habitat. Many populations are now cut off from migration routes and forced to inbreed.
An elephant’s tusk is a tooth. It’s an elongated incisor, one-third of which is embedded into the elephant’s skull. The tusk is made up of nerve endings and pulp matter, and removal is deadly.
Elephants use their tusks in a variety of ways. They are used to protect themselves and their herd from predators, and elephants can even use their tusks for digging water holes. However, elephants are also anintegral part of the environment. They are sometimes referred to as “mega gardeners,” and without them, hundreds of animal and plant species would cease to exist as well.
Why are Elephants Killed for Their Tusks?
Up to 70 percent of ivory poached goes to China, where half a kilogram of it can sell for as much as 1,000 U.S. dollars. This increase in demand has been fueled by the growth of a middle class in China. People can now afford the material that they have grown up believing is better than diamonds.
Tusks are specialized teeth and elephants have only one set that continue growing throughout the elephant’s life. They are sometimes broken off as a result of natural movements, such as digging and sparring with other elephants. If a tusk is not broken off at its root, then yes- the tusk will continue to grow.Feb 2, 2010
Can you cut off an Elephant’s Tusks without killing it?
A tusk can be removed without killing the elephant. … But poachers use darts, poison and high-powered automatic rifles with night scopes to take elephants down and, while they are dying, the tusks are gouged out of from the livingelephant’s skull. Jul 30, 2014
The Poacher & The Trade
How much is a pound of Ivory worth?
Ivory fetched prices as much as $1,500 per pound due to demand in Asia, where elephant tusks are ornately carved into art.Jun 2, 2016
Poachers kill elephants for their valuable tusks — a single pound of ivory can sell for $1,500, and tusks can weigh 250 pounds. That is USD375,000 (or just over a 1/3 million dollars) per tusk! Nov 7, 2016
How extensive is the poaching?
Poachers are now slaughtering up to 35,000 of the estimated 500,000 African elephants every year for their tusks. A single male elephant’s two tusks can weigh more than 250 pounds, with a pound of ivory fetching as much as $1,500 on the black market. The ivory is so valuable because all across Asia — particularly in China — ivory figurines are given as traditional gifts, and ivory chopsticks, hair ornaments, and jewelry are highly prized luxuries. “China regards ivory as a cultural heritage; they are not going to ban it,” said Grace Gabriel of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Many Chinese consumers don’t realize that elephants must be killed for their ivory; in one survey, more than two thirds of Chinese respondents said they thought tusks grew back like fingernails.
What impact has the slaughter had on the elephants?
Elephants are highly intelligent, social creatures that live in matriarchal groups, and poaching has ravaged much of their social structure. The biggest tusks are found on the largest breeding males and on the oldest females, who lead the elephant troops. Where these animals are targeted and killed, elephant populations are reduced to leaderless groups of traumatized orphans huddling together. In the past year, even they are being wiped out, as some poachers have started dumping cyanide into watering holes, killing every animal that drinks there. Last year, poachers killed an estimated 300 elephants in Zimbabwe’s largest park, Hwange, by lacing watering holes and salt licks with cyanide. To read more about the impact poaching of elephants have had on Botswana, more here.
Who are the poachers?
Since the industry is illegal, those who run it largely come from criminal syndicates or terrorist organizations. Al-Shabab, the Somalia-based wing of al Qaida, raises $600,000 a month from poaching to fund its activities. Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, the rebel group notorious for enslaving children, also raises money through poaching. “Poaching has become one of the most profitable criminal activities there is,” says Peter Seligmann, the CEO of Conservation International. Chinese mafia organizations mostly do the purchasing and distribution of ivory after it’s been obtained, selling it mostly in China and Southeast Asia but sometimes to markets in the U.S.
Why is the price so high?
When ivory became contraband, the supply got scarcer, but demand remained strong. In 1989, the international community passed a global ban on the trade in new ivory to stop the killing of elephants. Only ivory that had been harvested before 1989 could be sold, so the ivory carving industry in China crumbled, and with it the demand for tusks. Elephant populations rebounded — so much so that in 1999 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a global organization, decided to allow a “one-off” sale of pre-ban, stockpiled ivory to Japan (what did we not say here?).
Then in 2008 it authorized another “one-off”sale, this time to Japanese and Chinesemarkets. The Chinese carving industry roared back to life, as the Chinese government licensed dozens of carving factories and retail outlets. Since there’s no way to distinguish between pre-ban and new ivory, the illegal ivory trade has accelerated to meet the demand, and poaching is now worse than before the global ban.
(REUTERS/James Akena)
What steps are being taken to stop poaching?
Under pressure from some member nations, CITES refuses to institute a complete ban on the ivory trade. But the U.S. is taking its own measures. The U.S. is the second-biggest ivory market, after China. In a symbolic gesture last fall, U.S. officials smashed 6 tons of contraband ivory, including tusks and carvings, that had been seized from smugglers or confiscated from unwitting tourists. And in February, the Obama administration announced it would change regulations to ban interstate sales of all ivory except certified antiques, limit elephant trophy imports to two per hunter, and end commercial imports of antique ivory.
Is China cooperating?
Following the U.S.’s ivory crush, the Chinese government destroyed 6 tons this January, and Hong Kong authorities say they will destroy their 30-ton stockpile, one of the largest in the world. Chinese environmentalists have also begun educating the public about the dire consequences of buying ivory. But it’s a tough sell in a country where ivory has long symbolized wisdom and nobility. “With more disposable income in mainland China, many people are flaunting their wealth, and ivory is seen as a luxury product that confers status,” says Tom Milliken of the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network.
Why is the ban so hard to enforce?
There is no reliable way to tell pre-ban from post-ban ivory, or a real antique from a fake — in any country. “It’s not like you walk into a store and find someone selling cocaine, which is illegal on its face,” said Edward Grace, deputy assistant director for law enforcement at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In Chinese and U.S. shops alike, consumers simply assume that ivory trinkets are legal, and there is no way for law enforcement to prove that any particular item was made after 1989. Mary Rice, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, says there’s only one real solution: “We need to learn from history and permanently shut down all ivory trade — international and domestic.“
The End Consumer
Why is Ivory so popular in China?
Ivory is often used to make elaborate and expensive ornaments in China.
In China and Hong Kong, ivory is seen as precious material and is used in ornaments and jewelry. It’s also sometimes used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Some rich Chinese people think that owning ivory makes them look more successful. Others think that ivory will bring them good luck.
China has the biggest ivory trade in the world and wildlife experts believe that around 70 per cent of the world’s ivory ends up there.
It is said that buyers of ivory don’t understand they have blood on their hands. That notion is startling given where we are in the timeline of civilization and the increasingly global dissemination of knowledge. Conservation efforts have never reached so far and wide through media as they do today. So how can people not know about the tragedy behind their white gold trinkets? Accountability for this gross misconception seems to lie with the Chinese government.
But from uncovering this bizarre ignorance, change has been set into motion. A variety of conservation campaigns have been aimed at educating the middle class — those most likely to purchase ivory. People who have seen these campaigns, such as posters depicting how an elephant’s life is sacrificed to harvest their tusks, are far less likely to purchase ivory products. Japan was previously the largest demander of ivory, before organizations and celebrities raised awareness and reduced the consumption by 99 percent.
Beijing’s master ivory carvers cling to a controversial art
Beijing (CNN)When Li Chunke started carving ivory in 1964, the number of elephants in Africa was still on the rise. Demand for ivory in China was practically non-existent and tusks could be bought for under $7 a kilogram.
Today, this figure is closer to $1,100 — according to research by Save the Elephants.
But while this marks a significant increase over the course of Li’s career, the price of coveted xiangya (elephant teeth) has almost halved over the last 18 months.
An endangered art form?
Conservationists have welcomed the recent drop in demand, attributing it to awareness campaigns and President Xi Jinping’s commitment to abolish the ivory trade in China.
But for 65-year-old Li, these changing attitudes threaten an ancient art form and the livelihoods of many carvers. “Ivory carving represents Chinese traditional culture” he says, sipping green tea in his small apartment in Beijing. “Chinese people love it because it is an ancient skill — it’s a practice that belongs to the imperial arts.”
At the state-owned factory where he spent his five-decade career, Li would sculpt everything from small trinkets to full-length tusks adorned with classical scenes.
Legal restrictions mean that he is rarely able to keep raw ivory at his home. Nonetheless, on the far side of his living room I find a small workshop besieged by chisels, drill bits and tools. Some are electronic, but the majority are simple hand tools — the sort he trained with. From the clutter, Li picks out figurines carved from a variety of different materials.
Ivory’s rare combination of density and smoothness makes it ideal for intricate carving, but there are alternatives. Hippo, narwhal and walrus tusks possess similar qualities. “When we don’t have ivory, we also use beeswax and agarwood,” he explains.
Li shows me a small horse statuette and an ancient goddess fashioned from a piece of mammoth tusk — an ivory substitute excavated from the Siberian permafrost.
“When we made carvings for export [in the 1960s] the products had to represent Chinese traditional culture — it was merchandise,” he recalls. “Now I can carve on any theme, including religion and modern life.”
Since retiring from the factory in 2013, Li estimates he makes fewer than 10 carvings a year, and can spend as long as two months on a single item. He appears despondent about elephant poaching and the black market that are now associated with his industry. “We are legal ivory-carving professionals,” he says. “The ivory we used was from natural deaths. We ought to protect wildlife. I like animals and I’ve kept a puppy as a pet. I find it shocking that elephants are killed by men.”
With the worldwide ban on ivory in 1989, factories like Li’s were able to stay open, as China still permitted domestic trade. A licensing system allowed the continued import of tusks sourced from natural elephant deaths and police seizures.
But the distinction between legal and illegal trade is becoming blurred, say conservationists. A 2011 investigation by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) found that almost 60% of licensed vendors and carving factories in China were involved in black market trade.
A high-profile campaign featuring former basketball star Yao Ming argues that all ivory consumption — even the licensed trade — feeds the cycle of killing. “Yao Ming’s ‘no buying, no killing’ is only partly right — we still have to think about the inheritance of traditional Chinese culture,” Li says. “Of course, the raw material can be replaced by alternatives, which is why my students also use woods and jade. But some of the nuances of carving — ones that can only be reflected in ivory — are at risk.”
Carvers are turning to ivory substitutes including beeswax, agarwood and even mammoth tusk dug up from Siberian permafrost.
Rise in demand for mammoth tusks
On the other side of central Beijing, one of Li’s students, Li Jiulong (no relation), leads me into his small, dusty workshop. The 26-year-old shares the space with four other apprentices. A fellow carver sits practicing her technique on a small block of wood, her engravings guided by ink markings.
Work surfaces are arranged in a square, each littered with hand tools for breaking down large chunks of tusk and more accurate electronic ones for finer details. While his master is old enough to ignore the diminishing demand for ivory, the younger Li must keep his options open.
In addition to his apprenticeship he is also undertaking a master’s degree which sees him working with lacquer — a traditional colored finish applied to wood. He can obtain ivory through “the proper channels,” but Li spends much of his time carving other materials, including mammoth tusks.
“These tusks have been buried underground for a long time, which can cause cracks and change their color,” he explains, sketching out their differing patterns of grain on a piece of paper. “They would [originally have been] white like the elephant tusks, but they’re also more compact than normal ivory.”
Imports of mammoth tusks from Hong Kong (the main route bringing them in from Russia) has more than tripled since 2000. But the young apprentice retains some hope for traditional ivory carving, despite the recent drop in demand.
“It’s true that ivory won’t be huge business in the future but it won’t vanish. It is part of our cultural heritage,” he says. “It will survive and keep its place,” he argues.
In its 2015 survey of African workers, South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank found Batswana to be the laziest on the continent. The problem is actually more acute than that.
In the 2017-2018 Global Competitiveness Report, Botswana scores the worst among the 137 countries that are tracked by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) on 12 pillars of economic competitiveness. From a list of 16 factors, respondents to the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey were asked to select the five most problematic factors for doing business in their country and to rank them between 1 (most problematic) and 5. The results were then tabulated and weighted according to the ranking assigned by respondents. One of those factors is “Poor work ethic in national labour force.”
With a score of 19, Botswana’s national workforce (which would include those in the public and private sector as well as NGOs) emerge as standard bearers of the poorest work ethic in the world survey. Also doing poorly are Trinidad & Tobago (15.9), Brunei (14.4), Sri Lanka (11.1), Liberia (10.8), Bhutan (10.5), Seychelles (10.1), Malta (9.8), Georgia (9.7), Mauritius and Vietnam (9.5), Namibia (9.3), Bahrain (9.0), Kuwait (8.7) and United Arab Emirates and Jamaica (8.6).
WEF’s interest in labour productivity has to do with the fact that it impacts on business. A University of Botswana study by Professor John Makgala and Dr. Phenyo Thebe (“There is no Hurry in Botswana”: Scholarship and Stereotypes on “African time” Syndrome in Botswana, 1895-2011”) found that this lack of productivity has frustrated effort to attract foreign direct investment. Interestingly, there was a time when, according to literature that the authors quote, Botswana’s civil service “was generally believed to be the most efficient in the whole of the African continent.”
On a past trip to Singapore, former and late President Sir Ketumile Masire gained an appreciation on the efficiency of the country’s workers. Where a Motswana factory worker would produce one shirt within a given period of time, a Singaporean counterpart would produce six within the same period.
“This was productivity not in theory but in demonstrable terms. When we say we are not productive, this is what we meant,” Masire recalled to Sunday Standard in 2015 of this experience which would lead to Botswana benchmarking with Singapore and delegations from the two countries travelling back and forth.
As one of the Four Asian Tigers, Singapore would provide one quarter of the inspiration to establish the Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC). The tigers are Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Along the way, however, the late president appears to have given up on ever inculcating the right work ethic in Batswana. On assessing the apparent resistance, he determined that Batswana’s poor work ethic was a result of their pastoralism.
“If you look at the life of pastoralists, they don’t have a good work ethic,” he had said. The example he had cited was that beyond sinking a borehole for their livestock, letting out cattle to pasture and doing some other undemanding work, most of the time pastoralists are just lazing about as their cattle graze untended in the bush. By Masire’s analysis, this is the work ethic that has been bequeathed to modern-day Botswana.
As a University of Botswana study shows, not one productivity intervention scheme by the government has produced the desired results. In his 2015/16 budget speech, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Kenneth Matambo, lamented the low levels of labour productivity in Botswana. The best performers in terms of work ethic in the national labor force are from Zimbabwe and Venezuela underpinned by a perfect score.
Table 1: Comparison of Botswana with 2017’s Best Global Labour Productivity Data
DID YOU KNOW? THE AVERAGE PER CAPITA PRODUCTIVITY IN BOTSWANA LAGS THE WORLD’S PRODUCTIVE COUNTRY BY FOUR (4) TIMES?
TALKING POINTS:
Organizational Policy on Collective Responsibility and Financial Viability
1.Introduction Economic conditions are challenging. A private organization cannot survive solely on government-issued tenders. These organizations must find alternative sources of income. To achieve long-term viability, an organization must independently generate income through domestic production and sales. It should also strategically develop export channels to meet international market demands. Organizations that fail to adopt this framework will face challenges. Continuing to depend on government-led initiatives, donors, or grants is not sustainable. They must recognize that personal incomes and livelihoods will remain uncertain. Such income sources cannot be used as bargaining tools.
Given the absence of long-term planning at the outset, urgent and decisive transformation is now required. The organization must implement immediate, radical shifts in mindset and operational practices to effectively respond to the current challenges.
2. Fundamental Organizational Principles The next principles are essential to the organization’s integrity and must be upheld by all members. Violations occur when personal interests are prioritized over collective organizational welfare.
2.1 Collective Responsibility The organization is a collective entity, comprising both employees and the employer. Each individual assumes equal responsibility for the organization’s success and failure upon joining. Mere attendance does not constitute work; only output that meets the employer’s standards and expectations is considered work.
Employees are not entitled to income generated by predecessors, investors, or the employer. Organizational participation demands sustained effort, alignment with the organization’s goals, and active collaboration rather than passive compliance.
Failure to internalize this principle, especially in the context of cultural and linguistic differences, can lead to miscommunication. It also weakens cooperation and causes a decline in the necessary skills for collective functioning. Such deficiencies undermine the organization’s ability to function as a cohesive and effective entity.
2.2 Authority Over Assets The judicial system has sole authority. It determines if the organization’s assets are seized or liquidated. Employees do not have this right. Democratic processes allow employees indirect influence. Nevertheless, judicial action demands clear evidence of the employee’s direct contribution to the organization’s income generation.
Though these contributions are measurable, enforcement remains inconsistent, revealing a systemic gap. The organization does not offer exit benefits to employees without demonstrable contributions to income or growth. This is especially true during periods of financial strain or operational incapacity.
2.3 Compensation and Entitlement Employers hire staff without long-term guarantees to sustain salaries. Still, it is structurally unsound to allow severance or exit benefits to be claimed as entitlements independent of performance. Compensation must be based on the employee’s proven ability, whether during or after employment. The employee should generate enough income to cover operational costs, return on investment (ROI), profit, and organizational growth.
Claims that exceed this threshold are unfounded. Severance is not a reward for leaving but deferred compensation for value delivered during employment. Employees are not entitled to income generated by others, like predecessors or the employer.
2.4 Salary Agreements While salary terms are agreed upon at the time of appointment, such agreements can shield under-performance. Employees who fail to deliver measurable value still claim full compensation, leading to structural imbalance and threatening organizational sustainability.
2.5 Consequences of Non-Enforcement Failure to set up, enforce, and adhere to these principles will lead to systemic degradation. Over time, the financial and operational stability of the organization will deteriorate, weakening its capacity to fulfill its mission.
2.6 Impact on Organizational Culture and Performance As organizational health declines, employee morale, initiative, and innovation will suffer. Problem-solving capacity, resilience, and long-term outlook will also decline. These effects undermine both individual and collective performance, ultimately jeopardizing the organization’s sustainability.
3. Measuring Employee Contribution to Income Generation To assess the value contributed by each employee, the following metrics should be used:
Revenue per Employee: The total revenue divided by the number of employees. This is a key metric for assessing productivity and profitability.
Sales per Employee: The total sales divided by the number of employees. This metric is particularly relevant for organizations focused on revenue generation.
This policy framework outlines essential principles that must be followed to ensure organizational integrity and long-term success. All employees must align with these principles and contribute to the organization’s collective well-being.
Mindsets and Beliefs (Thinking) that contribute to these challenges:
The article examines the systemic challenges impacting Botswana’s productivity. It highlights that certain prevailing mindsets and beliefs contribute to these challenges:
Reliance on Past Solutions: The belief that previous solutions will address current problems can be limiting. As noted in “Law #1: Today’s Problems Come From Yesterday’s Solutions,” this mindset obstructs innovation. It prevents the development of approaches necessary for current challenges. More here.
Quick-Fix Mentality: Seeking immediate remedies without considering long-term consequences can exacerbate issues. “Law #5: The Cure Can Be Worse Than The Disease” shows that short-term solutions lead to significant problems. These issues can intensify over time. More here.
Desire for Immediate Gratification: The expectation of achieving multiple benefits simultaneously without acknowledging necessary trade-offs can be problematic. “Law #9: You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too” emphasizes the importance of recognizing trade-offs. It also highlights managing them in decision-making. More here.
Fostering a culture of continuous learning is essential. Embracing innovative solutions is also crucial. Understanding the complexities of systemic challenges further enhances productivity in Botswana.
Here’s a clearer breakdown of the ways of thinking and underlying beliefs that lead to the systemic challenges described in the article “Cracking the Botswana Productivity Code” by Sheila Singapore, with a focus on the mental models behind each:
1. Reliance on Past Solutions
Belief:“If it worked before, it will work again.” Way of Thinking:
Linear thinking, where cause and effect are assumed to be stable and repeatable.
Over-reliance on tradition or precedent rather than adaptive learning.
Lack of reflection on whether the original solution created new unintended consequences.
Result:
Failure to deal with root causes in a changing environment.
Resistance to innovation or systems redesign.
Related Law from the article: Law #1: Today’s Problems Come from Yesterday’s Solutions
This law warns that yesterday’s “fixes” often sow the seeds of today’s dysfunction. Over time, without continuous learning, these solutions become entrenched, even when they no longer serve the current reality.
2. Quick-Fix Mentality
Belief:“We need to act now—any action is better than no action.” Way of Thinking:
Event-oriented thinking, focused on visible symptoms rather than underlying patterns.
Short-termism, driven by urgency or performance metrics.
Preference for symptomatic solutions instead of fundamental or structural ones.
Result:
When resources become available, there is often a tendency to focus on “low-hanging fruit.” These are initiatives that promise quick wins or visible results. While these offer short-term gains, they often come at the expense of fundamental investments (such as building the agriculture and manufacturing economic bases). These investments are necessary for long-term, sustainable growth and, therefore, profits and return. As a result, systemic issues stay unresolved, and progress becomes cyclical, fragile, and ultimately unsustainable.
Interventions that create new problems or worsen existing ones.
A culture of fire-fighting rather than strategic planning.
Related Law from the article: Law #5: The Cure Can Be Worse Than the Disease
This law illustrates how applying quick solutions can escalate the problem in the long run. It stresses the need to pause, study the whole system, and design for lasting change rather than just immediate relief.
3. Wish for Immediate Gratification
Belief:“We can have it all now—there shouldn’t be trade-offs.” Way of Thinking:
Magical or wishful thinking—assuming that multiple benefits can be achieved at the same time without tension.
Disregard for systemic delays and unintended consequences.
Inability to rank or sequence actions for sustainable impact.
Result:
Over-promising and under-delivering.
Undermining of trust and credibility when goals aren’t met.
Related Law from the article: Law #9: You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too—But Not All at Once
This law highlights the need for strategic trade-offs and pacing. It encourages leaders to resist the temptation of “everything, everywhere, all at once.” Instead, they should align their ambitions with system capacity and time.
Summary Thought:
Each of these beliefs reflects a limited mental model. Systems thinker Peter Senge cautions against this kind of model in The Fifth Discipline. These models block adaptive learning and creative problem-solving. Shifting toward systems thinking involves embracing uncertainty, learning from feedback, and engaging multiple perspectives for lasting, generative change.
Let’s map those unproductive ways of thinking and beliefs to leverage points that can help shift the process toward sustained productivity—using Donella Meadows’ leverage points framework (and with Fifth Discipline thinking sprinkled in):
🔁 Mapping Limiting Beliefs to Systemic Leverage Points
1. Reliance on Past Solutions
Belief: “If it worked before, it will work again.”
Limiting Mental Model: Fixed mindsets, failure to update strategies with changing conditions.
🎯 Leverage Point: Change the mindset or paradigm out of which the system arises(#2 on Meadows’ list)
Actionable Strategy:
Introduce system thinking education at leadership levels.
Help regular reflection sessions where teams critically assess past “solutions” and their unintended consequences.
Use learning histories or After Action Reviews to surface system feedback over time.
🧠 Fifth Discipline Insight:
Replace reactive problem-solving with “personal mastery” and “shared vision” to encourage progressive-thinking and co-created futures.
2. Quick-Fix Mentality
Belief: “Just do something. Anything.”
Limiting Mental Model: Immediate action is always the answer; no time for systems mapping or stakeholder engagement.
🎯 Leverage Point: Lengthen the delays to allow for system feedback and learning(#6)
Actionable Strategy:
Build delays into planning cycles for research, prototyping, and community engagement.
Adopt a “double-loop learning” model: don’t just ask “Are we doing things right?” but also “Are we doing the right things?”
Replace KPIs focused on immediate outputs with indicators of long-term ability (like “rate of organizational learning”).
🧠 Fifth Discipline Insight:
Avoid the “Shifting the Burden” archetype where symptomatic fixes distract from fundamental changes.
3. Desire for Immediate Gratification
Belief: “We can have it all right now.”
Limiting Mental Model: Trade-offs are unnecessary or signs of failure.
🎯 Leverage Point: Change the goals of the system(#3)
Actionable Strategy:
Redefine success to include sustainability, capability-building, and resilience—not just short-term gains.
Use a balanced scorecard that includes social, learning, and environmental capital alongside financial metrics.
Build public awareness of delayed gratification as part of national development (e.g., through storytelling or national campaigns).
🧠 Fifth Discipline Insight:
Shift to a “generative orientation”—focus on capacity to grow and evolve over time, not just on immediate results.
🔧 Practical Implementation for Botswana or Your Org:
Limiting Belief
Suggested Intervention
Target Leverage Point
Who Leads?
Relying on outdated solutions
Systems thinking workshops; “sunsetting” old programs
Paradigm shift
Research & Policy Units
Quick fixes preferred
Create slow-down protocols; delay mechanisms
Delays in feedback
PMO / Strategic Planning Units
Wanting it all now
Align vision with phased growth plans
System goals
Board / Exec Leadership
Here’s the visual causal mapping between the limiting beliefs and their corresponding systemic leverage points:
🔴 Reliance on Past Solutions links to a Paradigm Shift, calling for deeper mindset transformation.
🟡 Quick-Fix Mentality connects to Delays & Feedback Loops, urging better pacing and long-term learning.
🔵 Desire for Immediate Gratification maps to Changing System Goals, emphasizing a shift toward sustainability and capacity building.
Here’s the enhanced systemic leverage map, showing:
Limiting beliefs (left),
The leverage points needed to shift the system (center),
The key stakeholders or institutional roles responsible for enabling those shifts (right).
This format is ideal for strategic planning sessions or policy discussions, making it easy to assign ownership and co-design interventions.
REQUIRED RESEARCH ANALYSIS
FOR DETAILS OF DATA REQUIRED FOR RESEARCH ANALYSIS FOR THIS SUBJECT, CLICK HERE.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard July 28, 2013, edition, Systemic Thinking Column
When a couple are in conflict, often times we are expecting that our partner to think, act and be like ourselves and meet our needs in the same way we think we should meet theirs. That’s where we can get this wrong.
The column is currently exploring the link between the state of emotional fidelity that exists between couples and the state of HIV/AIDS prevalence that exists as a nation. To do so, the article explores the ways how men and women think and feel emotions differently.
When we are aware of the differences, we “are freed from the tendency to change our partners at those times we are not getting what we want. With a greater level of acceptance and understanding, love flourishes and we get what we want from our relationships,” says the author of “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”, Dr John Gray.
The freedom from the tendency to change partners or retain a “variety of them” now becomes a critical key to seeing the prevalence of HIV/AIDS decline.
This week we continue to explore more of the twelve kinds of emotional love that can exist between a man and woman in love. Physically, we probably have rather similar needs, the need to appease hunger and thirst, the need to stay warm and for shelter, and so on.
But that’s where the similarities end for the “opposite” genders. Emotionally, we are like from different planets, so says, Dr John Gray, “Men are from Mars” and “Women are from Venus” and then we met on earth without realizing how we come from two different planets! Go figure! And we did not come with a handbook to navigate us through this emotional maze.
Here’s one example of this difference.
A man wants his favourite woman to trust that he can handle whatever is bothering him. That he can handle his problems is important for his honour, pride and self-esteem. However for the woman, not worrying about him is difficult for her. Worrying for others is one way women express their love and caring. It is a way of showing love. Go figure but it is true.
For a woman, being happy when the person you love is upset just doesn’t seem right.
Ironically, men show their love by not worrying.
He does not want her to be happy because he is upset, but he does want her to be happy. It helps him to feel loved by her. “How can you worry about someone whom you admire and trust?”, a man questions.
But for a woman, she wants him to worry for her when she was upset. Sometimes, it takes years for a man to figure this distinction. Without understanding this distinction and if a man minimizes the importance of her concerns, this would make the woman more upset. Again something that does not make sense from a man’s perspective, but it is true. Ask your man and woman friends (this can make very interesting conversation over a pint of beer!)
The best comes out in a man when his six primary (yes, there are six of them) love needs are fulfilled. But when a woman doesn’t know what he primarily needs and give a caring love rather than a trusting love, she may unknowingly worsen their relationship. Here is a story in point.
The knight in Shining Armour
(Extracted from “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”).
This is a powerful metaphor to help us remember a man’s primary needs. Too much caring and assistance will lessen his confidence or turn him off.
Deep inside every man there is a hero or a knight in shining armour. More than anything, he wants to succeed in serving and protecting the woman he loves. When he feels trusted, he is able to tap into his noble part of himself. He becomes more caring. When he doesn’t feel trusted, he loses some of his aliveness and energy and after a while he can stop caring.
Imagine a knight in shining armour travelling through the countryside. Suddenly he hears a woman crying out in distress, In an instant, he comes alive. Urging his horse to gallop, he races to her castle, where she trapped by a dragon. The noble knight pulls out his sword and slays the dragon. As a result, he is lovingly received the by the princess.
As the gate open he is welcomed and celebrated by the family of the princess and the townspeople. He is invited to live in the town and is acknowledged as a hero. He and the princess fall in love.
A month later as the noble knight returns from another trip, he hears his beloved princess crying out for help. Another dragon has attacked the castle. When the knight arrives he pulls out his sword to slay the dragon. Before he swings, the princess cries, “Don’t use the sword, use this noose. It will work better.”
She throws him the noose and motions to him instructions about how to use it. He hesitantly follows her instructions. He wraps it around the dragon’s neck and then pulls hard. The dragon dies and everyone rejoices.
At the celebration dinner, the knight feels he didn’t really do anything. Somehow, because he used her noose and didn’t use his sword, he doesn’t feel worthy of the town’s trust and admiration. And the even he is slightly depressed and forgets to shine his armor.
A month later he goes on yet another trip. As he leaves with his sord, the princess reminds him to be careful and tells him to take the noose. On his way home, he sees yet another dragon attacking the castle. This time he rushes forward with his sword but hesitates, thinking maybe he should use the noose. In that moment of hesitation, the dragon breathes fire and burns his right arm. In confusion, he looks and sees his princess waving from the castle window.
“Use the poison,” she yells. “The noose doesn’t work.”
She throws him the poison, which he pours into the dragon’s mouth and the dragon dies. Everyone rejoices and celebrates, but the knight feels ashamed.
A month later, he goes on another trip. As he leaves with his sword, the princess reminds him to be careful, and to bring the noose and the poison. He is annoyed by her suggestions but brings them just in case.
This time on his journey he hears another woman in distress. As he rushes to her call, his depression is lifted and he feels confident and alive. But as he draws his sword to slay the dragon, he again hesitates. He wonders, should I use my sword, the noose or the poison? What would the princess say?
For a moment, he is confused. But then he remembers how he had felt before he knew the princess, back in the days when he only carried a sword. With a burst of renewed confidence, he throws off the noose and poison and charges the dragon with his trusted sword. He slays the dragon and the townspeople rejoice.
The knight in shining armour never returned to his princess. He stayed in this new village, married the princess and lived happily ever after.
As the couple learns to meet these differences it prepares the couple to move to the next deeper level of emotional intimacy between them. Respect. And Appreciation. This will be the subject of next week’s column.
In what way does not knowing these differences that exist between a couple have an impact on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS as a nation?
Would this series of causality be different for countries beyond Botswana in instances where the epidemic has become resistant to our effort to intervene it? Strange as this question may sound, whose mandate is it to understand and “manage” these distinctions? The medical sector? The United Nations? The government? Who would that be? What do you think? What do your friends think?
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a Systemic Strategy Development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518 or email sheila@loatwork.com.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard July 21, 2013, edition, Systemic Thinking Column
When women talk, it means it is a good sign! They are actually de-stressing.
Some of the male readers of the column shared they were surprised from the previous week’s column that the act of making social contact (such as talking and seeking to be heard or nurturing activities) for a woman is to a woman what withdrawing or becoming aggressive does to relieve stress for the man.
They had no idea!!!
When a man is stressed, he goes to his cave! He will withdraw into the cave of his mind and focus on solving a problem. He generally picks the most urgent problem or the most difficult. He becomes so focussed on solving this one problem that he for a while loses awareness of everything else. Other problems and responsibilities fade into the background. If he can find a solution, instantly he will feel much better and come out of his cave and suddenly he is available for being in a relationship again.
Women handle stress very differently.
She does not know how to go to the cave of her mind. She talks. Or she finds activities in which she is taking care of or connecting emotionally with others. This also stimulates the production of oxytocin for her.
“An understanding of oxytocin-producing behaviours can completely change the way a man interprets a woman’s behaviour. For example, when a woman complains she is not getting enough support or feels the need to talk about the problems in her life, it does not mean she does not appreciate what her partner does. Instead, her behaviour is an indication that she is attempting to cope with stress by increasing her oxytocin levels”
— John Gray, Author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
Generating oxytocin in the work world outside the home does not happen easily as it can be disrupted by the demands of having to make decisions, and set priorities based on bottom line instead of the need of others, and behaving in a professional manner. These are testosterone producing situations. Though there is nothing wrong with stimulating testosterone, it does nothing to lower a woman’s stress levels.’
Finding relief through talking.
When women talk about problems, men usually resist. A man assumes she is talking to him about her problems, because she is holding him responsible. The more problems, the more he feels blamed. He does not realize that she is talking to feel better.
She would usually not open up to a man, if she had not felt “safe to do so” with him. It is a sign of intimacy she is extending to him on her part. So, if a woman does talk to you, it is a good sign for the relationship. He will also eventually learn that that she will appreciate him if he just listens.
Men talk about problems for only two reasons: they are blaming someone or they are seeking advice. Therefore when a woman is really upset, a man assumes she is blaming him. Then he draws his sword to protect himself from attack. If he offers solutions to her problems, she just continues talking about more problems. He finds his solutions have been rejected and he feels unappreciated. In both cases, he soon finds it difficult to listen.
He does not realize that explanations are not what she needs. She needs him to understand her feelings and let her move on to talk about more problems. If he is wise and just listens, then a few moments after she is complaining about him, she will change the subject and talk about other problems as well.
The degree to which a man does not understand a woman is the degree to which he will resist her when she is talking about problems. As a man learns more how to fulfil a woman and provide her emotional support he discovers that listening is not so difficult.
Men and women learn to live together in peace because they were able to respect their emotional differences. The men learned to respect that women need to talk to feel better. Even if he didn’t have much to say, he learned that by listening he could be very supportive of her.
The women learned to respect that unlike themselves, men when they are stressed, needed to withdraw to cope with stress. The place where he retires to distress was no longer a great mystery or cause for alarm.
Emotionally, the needs of the two genders are opposite. Yet, that’s exactly what it takes a couple to come together. As opposite genders, we do not meet in our similarities. But in our differences.
When a couple are in conflict, often times it happens because we are attempting to meet the needs for them from our respective perspectives. We think they are the same as ours. That’s where we get this wrong.
As the couple learns to meet these differences it prepares the couple to move to the next deeper level of emotional intimacy between them. Respect. And Appreciation. This will be the subject of next week’s column.
In what ways does not knowing these differences that exist between a couple have an impact on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS as a nation? Would this series of causality be different beyond Botswana particularly in instances where the epidemic has become resistant to our effort to intervene it? What do you think? What do your friends think? What do you agree on? What do you disagree on?
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a Systemic Strategy Development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518 or email sheila@loatwork.com.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard on June 30, 2013, Systemic Thinking Column
The column is currently exploring the link between the states of level of emotional fidelity that exists between couples and HIV/AIDS prevalence rates that exists as a nation.
It is difficult to imagine that something that prevails by as much as at a personal level can have an impact at a national level. Yet, when we observe the phenomena of emotional (rather than of sexual) fidelity that exists from person to person, family to family, district to district, region to region, it is really not all that difficult to imagine or ignore the significance of the influence on the level of the epidemic as a nation. Viruses are not transmitted in the open. Just because I do not see they are happening openly, it does not mean the transmissions are not happening.
Source: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Dr John Gray
Yet, what is emotional fidelity and what influences it?
In the past weeks we saw that this begins when the couple works at meeting and fulfilling the emotional needs of one’s partner.
And then we discovered that the emotional needs of one’s partner (of the opposite gender) are typically different from that of one’s own.
In fact there are twelve kinds of emotional needs or as we say twelve kinds of love that can exist between a couple.
The figure here illustrates what these look like. We will start from the top.
When a woman meets and fulfils a man’s need to see his woman trust him, it allows him to grow his sense of belief in himself (when a woman believes in her man, it makes it easier for a man to believe in himself). This act grows feelings of masculinity that fosters a need within him to provide, protect and care for his woman.
As he cares for his woman in each step of the way; the act releases oxytocin in her body, a powerful hormone that plays a huge role in pair bonding for the woman. When we hug or kiss a loved one, oxytocin levels drive up for the person. This allows her to grow her feelings of feminity that allow her to behave truer to her gender as a woman for her man. This then allows her to grow feelings of trust in her man.
The more that a man cares for his woman, the more she trusts him!
While the couple helps to meet and build the emotional needs of their partner, the cycle behaves in a self-seeking way that reinforces their ability to receive and meet their partners’ needs. The couple bonds in this way.
This type of relationship does not require moral, physical or monetary obligations to tie it together so as to make it work.
Couples, who learn this subtle shift in difference in the way they see their partner early on in their relationship, are often on their way to realizing greater levels of fulfilment between them. Making relationships work becomes ‘cheap’.
As the man and the woman enjoy the first of these levels of emotional intimacy between them, they become ready to move on to the next steps in the bonding process.
This is the capacity of the man to understand the woman by listening to the views she expresses from her side of the world.
For the woman, this also means her ability to accept the man for who he is rather than who she wants to be.
Whenever a man changes his ways, be they his views or his actions, it would be on his own terms. This is not an act of defiance. It is what defines a man and separates him from the feelings of being a boy or a child.
It is important for a man that he sees his woman accepts him for who he is and not who he needs to be for her. The more the man feels he is allowed to change on his terms, and sees the woman trusts him to change on his own accord, the more he feels that his woman meets his need to accept him.
So rather, than say, “Why don’t you take the trashcan out? It is your trash too!” she instead requests of him to “Would you take the trash out? It would really make a difference to how the house would feel.” And when he does take the trash out, she then makes a big deal of his action. Whenever a man does something for his woman, he assumes there is a risk involved as he is not sure if his actions would be wholly accepted by his woman.
When he sees that she accepts whatever he has given to her, it makes him happy. This happiness is key to him becoming open to requests on her part in the future for things she would like to see happen for herself.
And this is now his capacity to listen to and understand his woman.
It is not an uncommon remark by men amongst men how “women do not stop talking”. It is really not all that difficult to see this at checkout counters or at restaurants or at government service counters to see service delivery is delayed, because the women staffs are choosing to chat up to a point that it becomes incessant for each other. It is now placing a dent on the economy.
Women fulfil that need for each other quite easily. They are programmed to know how to ‘listen to another woman that fulfils this need for her. Men however are not programmed to listen for the sake of listening. He is designed to listen so as to take an action. He is Mr Fix It. So how would a woman “programme” her man, so that he becomes ready to offer the listening ear she needs to feel she has been understood by her man?
Think about it and we will explore it here in our next column and the impact of meeting these emotional needs on each other as well as for the economy. We will explore this and more of the remaining twelve kinds of love then.
How true have these experiences been for you? As a man? And as a woman? How would you tell these distinctions exist for each other? Happy discussing these with your spouse or your girlfriend and discovering from each other!
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a Systemic Strategy Development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard on June 9, 2013, Systemic Thinking Column
“She’s not my type” or “He is not my type”
Yet, that’s exactly what it takes a couple to come together. As opposite genders, we do not meet in our similarities. But in our differences. Emotionally.
When a couple are in conflict, often times it happens because we are attempting to meet the needs for them from our respective perspectives. We think they are the same as ours. That’s where we can get this wrong.
In the past few weeks, we explored while a woman accords trust and accepts her man for who he is, her need is met for her when she sees the man care for her.
The column is currently exploring the link between the state of emotional fidelity that exists between couples and the state of HIV/AIDS prevalence that exists as a nation.
This week we continue to explore more of the twelve kinds of love that can exist between a man and woman in love.
First however, a sharing of interesting reactions by readers of the column. In the course of the week, I received reactions particularly by women readers who share the extent to which they had placed trust on the man they love and how they accepted him for who is, yet, did not see their relationship last.
In many such instances, we also see the couple enter into sexual relationships very early on in their relationship. Each story is heartfelt yet interestingly the story line repeats in much the same way across relationships. In most instances sexual intimacy acted as a substitute for the emotional intimacy that can happen between a couple. We thought the two types of intimacies are the same. They are not.
There is a however a trick to helping build emotional intimacies between a couple. Interestingly however, it is found in the first of the ABCs as advocated by government in their efforts to prevent HIV/AIDs transmission. And that is abstinence. This “tool” serves a double-edged sword. It could prevent transmissions of the virus. It also becomes key to building the emotional intimacies between couples.
When the couple is sexually intimate very early on in the relationship, and yet emotional fidelity has not built up between the two, the latter is less likely to happen for the couple. It can also mean it does not happen for life afterwards for the individual even with other partners.
So it is harder to say ‘we trust or accept someone’ because we have become sexually intimate with that person or for reasons other than for reasons attributed for that individual. Building a level of emotional intimacy can take months to happen. It does not survive short spans (over night or weeks) of time.
For emotional fidelity to grow, it needs to happen in a space where the couple have not become sexually intimate as yet. In instances where the couple are successful in doing so, one would usually find they have taken the time to instead to build emotional intimacy between them.
This would seem harder than it is. It is more so when reflected against a backdrop of seeming need African men have to be engaged sexually and women’s fear that should they not give in, one would “lose the man” to the next person.
There is an emotional distinction in the sexual activity intended to build an intimacy with one’s partner and one that helps a man regain his sense of manhood or masculinity. Can you tell the difference? In one instance it would feel that the man regained or received his sense of masculinity while the other is where the woman feels she received affection rather than having given in to the man.
The man received and the woman gave. There is a misfit here.
Women sense of joy comes foremost when they “receive” from their man. A woman who finds herself giving or giving in to others, will usually find herself falling into depression. The need to give is now running against her inherent nature as a feminine woman.
A man’s deepest sense of joy comes from giving. When a man is at the receiving end (as when a woman pays for him financially), he may be happy in receiving the money, but not at the expense of he questioning his sense of manhood even so privately. He may not present this emotional discomfort in front of the lady. But it could lead him having the need to seek out more sexual conquests with other women as a means to compensate for declining notions of his manhood.
On the other hand, where women learn to build her partner’s emotional sense of masculinity by meeting his emotional needs (trust and acceptance), she would find that over time , this leads to his need for sustained sexual conquests to decline. This now allows him to open up to build relationships with his partner emotionally.
And this includes now his capacity to listen to and fulfil a need for his woman that her man “understands” her. This need is ultimately defined by her when it is met for her.
It is not an uncommon remark amongst men to share with each other how much “women do not stop talking”. It is really not all that difficult to see this evident at checkout counters or at government service counters or to see service delivery delayed because of the women staffs’ need to talk with each other so as to be heard. This can sometimes come across as incessant chatting.
It is now beginning to place a dent on the economy. It is a sign that the man in their lives have not yet fulfilled this need for his woman.
Women easily fulfil this need for each other amongst themselves. They are programmed to know how to ‘listen to another woman”. Notice the ways when women talk to each other, how they would listen to the woman and respond by taking what they have heard and relating it to their personal experiences and sharing their reactions to the woman or just showing interest in hearing more of what’s been said.
Men however are not programmed to listen for the sake of listening. He is designed to listen so as to take an action. He is Mr Fix It.
So how then would a woman “programme” her man, so that he becomes ready to offer the listening ear she needs to feel she has been understood?
All she would need to start with is a request to her man: “Sweetheart, will you offer me a listening ear? I do not need you to fix anything. I had a difficult day at work, and it will mean a lot to me if you’d do just listen.”
A woman would not need to say such to another woman. But she needs to remember to say that to her man. We forget this subtle point with the opposite gender. Now he knows exactly what to DO. The “fix “for him is to listen. He relaxes, downs his tools and prepares to listen to his woman.
Most men hesitate to take this step because when he sees that his woman is unhappy he believes the reason for her unhappiness has something to do with him. And he is not sure what is causing it. It is a risk for him.
But if she prepares him to listen, and he listens, he will soon discover that all she needed was a sounding board.
When a woman is allowed to express what she hopes her man would hear, two things happen for her. She begins to calm down as when she sees someone listening to her, it allows her to complete her trains of thoughts that lead her to become clearer of what she needs to do next. This de-stresses her immediately. This becomes key to ready her to meet another need for her man. And that is to appreciate him for what he does for her. Her attention now turns away from herself (and therefore she stops talking) to her partner.
Don’t forget to appreciate the man for listening to you. The gesture prepares him to better listen to his woman the next time.
The best gift a man can give to his woman is to offer a listening ear to her.
And the couple learns to meet these differences it prepares the couple to move to the next deeper level of emotional intimacy between them.
Are these how you see these or do you see these differently?
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a Systemic Strategy Development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518 or email sheila@loatwork.com.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard on June 30, 2013, The Systemic Thinking Column
The column is currently exploring the link between the states of emotional fidelity between couples and HIV/AIDS prevalence rates that exist as a nation.
It is difficult to imagine that something that prevails by as much as at a personal level can have an impact at a national level. Yet, when we observe the phenomena of emotional (rather than sexual) fidelity that exists from person to person, family to family, district to district, and region to region, it is really not all that difficult to imagine or ignore the significance of the influence on the level of the epidemic as a nation. Viruses are not transmitted in the open. Just because I do not see they are happening openly, it does not mean the transmissions are not happening.
Source: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Dr John Gray
Yet, what is emotional fidelity, and what influences it?
In the past weeks, we saw that this begins when the couple works at meeting and fulfilling the emotional needs of one’s partner.
And then we discovered that the emotional needs of one’s partner (of the opposite gender) are typically different from that of one’s own.
In fact, there are twelve kinds of emotional needs or as we say twelve kinds of love that can exist between a couple.
Women need to receive caring, understanding, respect, devotion, validation, and reassurance. Women are motivated when they feel special or cherished.Men must receive trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement. Men are encouraged when they feel needed.
The figure here illustrates what these look like. We will start from the top.
When a woman meets and fulfills a man’s need to see his woman trust him, it allows him to grow his sense of belief in himself (when a woman believes in her man, it makes it easier for a man to believe in himself). This act grows feelings of masculinity that foster a need within him to provide, protect, and care for his woman.
As he cares for his woman in each step of the way; the act releases oxytocin in her body, a powerful hormone that plays a huge role in pair bonding for the woman. When we hug or kiss a loved one, oxytocin levels drive up for the person. This allows her to grow her feelings of feminity which allows her to behave truer to her gender as a woman for her man. This then allows her to grow feelings of trust in her man.
The more that a man cares for his woman, the more she trusts him!
While the couple helps to meet and build the emotional needs of their partner, the cycle behaves in a self-seeking way that reinforces their ability to receive and meet their partners’ needs. The couple bonds in this way.
This type of relationship does not require moral, physical, or monetary obligations to tie it together to make it work.
Couples, who learn this subtle shift in difference in the way they see their partner early on in their relationship, are often on their way to realizing greater levels of fulfillment between them. Making relationships work becomes ‘cheap’.
As the man and the woman enjoy the first of these levels of emotional intimacy between them, they become ready to move on to the next steps in the bonding process.
This is the capacity of the man to understand the woman by listening to the views she expresses from her side of the world.
For the woman, this also means her ability to accept the man for who he is rather than who she wants to be.
Whenever a man changes his ways, be they his views or his actions, it would be on his own terms. This is not an act of defiance. It is what defines a man and separates him from the feelings of being a boy or a child.
It is important for a man that see his woman accept him for who he is and not who he needs to be for her. The more the man feels he is allowed to change on his terms, and sees the woman trusts him to change on his own accord, the more he feels that his woman meets his need to accept him.
So rather, than say, “Why don’t you take the trashcan out? It is your trash too!” she instead requests of him to “Would you take the trash out? It would really make a difference to how the house would feel.” And when he does take the trash out, she then makes a big deal of his action. Whenever a man does something for his woman, he assumes there is a risk involved as he is not sure if his actions would be wholly accepted by his woman.
When he sees that she accepts whatever he has given to her, it makes him happy. This happiness is key to him becoming open to requests on her part in the future for things she would like to see happen for herself.
And this is now his capacity to listen to and understand his woman.
It is not an uncommon remark by men amongst men how “women do not stop talking”. It is really not all that difficult to see this at checkout counters or at restaurants or at government service counters to see service delivery is delayed because the women staff are choosing to chat up to a point that it becomes incessant for each other. It is now placing a dent on the economy.
Women fulfill that need for each other quite easily. They are programmed to know how to ‘listen to another woman that fulfills this need for her. Men however are not programmed to listen for the sake of listening. He is designed to listen to take an action. He is Mr Fix It. So how would a woman “programme” her man, so that he becomes ready to offer the listening ear she needs to feel she has been understood by her man?
Think about it and we will explore it here in our next column and the impact of meeting these emotional needs on each other as well as for the economy. We will explore this and more of the remaining twelve kinds of love then.
How true have these experiences been for you? As a man? And as a woman? How would you tell these distinctions exist for each other? Happy discussing these with your spouse or your girlfriend and discovering from each other!
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a Systemic Strategy Development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard on June 9, 2013, Systemic Thinking Column
In the previous segment of this column, we concluded it was not as easy for someone to be sexually fidel till one learns to build and enjoy “emotional fidelity” with one’s partner.
It can be easy to miss this point.
Yet it becomes significant when we explore the link between the state of emotional fidelity between couples and the state of HIV/AIDS prevalence as a nation.
How are they inter-related, you ask?
It can be difficult to imagine that something that exists at a personal level can have an impact on a national level. Yet, when we see the phenomena happen across families, communities, districts to the region, it is not difficult to see that they can and do have a significant and growing influence on the level of the epidemic as a nation.
Our medical caregivers then give their all to fight it for the nation. It is really admirable how they do so, even when we know we have not made it easy for them.
Last week, we explored that developing emotional fidelity is the exclusive work of the couple. No one can do that for them. The parents and the community around a couple may encourage marriage and the ability to stay in one. But, not much more. And certainly not foster emotional fidelity.
This aspect therefore, is now beyond “the control” of SADC, or as the national planning commissions or the government or the Ministry of Health, the caregivers, or even as an NGO. We control what we can. But till we as couples learn to reach this, leaving the work of beating the epidemic to an outside organization, will not assure us of success in this issue as a nation!
Yet, what is emotional fidelity and what influences it?
We saw that this state begins when the couple works at meeting and fulfilling the emotional needs of one’s partner.
And then we discovered that the emotional needs of one’s partner (of the opposite gender) are typically different from that of one’s own.
For example, when a man sees his woman trust him, it meets an emotional need for the male partner. And seeing the man give care to his woman meets an emotional need for the female partner.
Both genders need both emotions. Just not to the same extent. To feel fulfilled as their gender in the relationship each as a unique emotional need.
When a woman meets and fulfils a man’s need to see his woman trusts him, it allows him to feel more so like a man. Even when we think, he is not worthy of the trust, the more the man sees the woman learns to see ‘the good side’ of him and trusts him, the more he moves to a state of feeling fulfilled. This stage is important for his feelings of masculinity to grow for him which in turn fosters a need within him to provide, protect and care for his woman.
While a man can trust his woman, it matters even more so to her, when she sees he cares for her. The more he cares for his woman; it allows her to feel true to her gender as a woman. And the more that allows her to grow feminine feelings as a woman; it allows her to grow and give trust to her man.
Wait!
Did we see a cycle of causality that exists between the two genders, in meeting their respective emotional needs?
The more that a man cares for his woman, the more she trusts him!
Period. This is where the trick lies in bringing a couple together. It is growing the cycle of meeting their respective but different emotional needs.
The bottom-line is they are not meant to be self-fulfilling nor meant to fulfil in ways that one thinks it should be for the partner from one’s point of view. But from the view of one’s partner. No other relationship quite teaches us to learn this point.
We often say relationships are not straightforward. That statement is truer than we believe.
It is not meant to be. Otherwise separation and divorces become the only ways out back to our straightforward lives.
The relationships between couples are meant to be cyclical.
The more the woman trusts her man, the more he cares for her. The more the man cares for his woman, the more she trusts him.
Couples, who learn this subtle shift in difference in their relationship in the way they relate to their partner, often realize greater levels of fulfilment between them.
I then left you with two further questions.
How would we know that these indeed are the respective needs of the two genders? And who should start first?
Notice when a man or a woman is in a heated discussion with each other, what would the man or woman typically say to the other? Would the man usually say “just trust me” or would he say, “you do not care for me!”? Whose voice do you typically hear say these words? What did you hear in your own relationship?
It is more common for us to hear a woman say, “you do not care for me”, while a man often asks of the woman ‘to just trust him’. We do leave clues in our relationships about our needs for our partners. We just need to find them. When a woman tries to reach her man, it is not because she does not trust him by as much as for her to feel the experience of his assurance of care for her. This is not a formula. It is a natural emotional need that exists separately for the two genders.
Who should start first? Do I wait for my partner to fulfil my emotional needs first before I try to meet his? Of course, that becomes self-defeating since, by doing so, we have already come from a place of the self rather than for the other.
However, this depends on the extent such needs have been met for the individual from their past relationships. The less it has been met, the more it becomes important for the partner to meet those needs for his or her partner first.
For example, the first man a woman learned to trust was her father. However, if she did not enjoy a trusting relationship with her father, it now becomes important that her boyfriend or husband learns to fulfil and meet that need for his woman before he may expect her to learn to trust him. In time, she will. One would have to learn to be patient till one reaches that stage.
And then there are five other types of emotional needs that are different for men andwomen. Have you found out what they are?
Here, I will leave you with two more each for each gender and they will become the subject of the column’s discussion for next week while you continue to figure what the other remaining three emotional needs are for the respective genders (there are twelve types of love or emotional needs in total …. no one said it was going to be that easy, did they?).
How true are they for you? How would you tell these distinctions?
Happy discussing these with your spouse and discovering these needs from each other!
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a Systemic Strategy Development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard on June 2, 2013
“A relationship does not need the “baggage” we bring to it from our respective pasts. Yet it serves to remind us they are there, if we are still carrying them. Leverage the relationship to work at unloading our baggage together.
The act of doing so clears misunderstandings and brings the two even closer. Every time.
Conflicts in a relationship are not bad. 90% of the time they are the result of reasons from our pasts.”
In last week’s segment of this column, we concluded it was not as easy for one to enjoy sexual fidelity for oneself till one learns to enjoy “emotional fidelity” with one’s partner. It is easy to miss this point in the “heat of the moments” but it is hard to ignore this inter-relationship over time.
When emotional fidelity or intimacy is missing between couples, it brings all relationships to an eventual standstill. It’s usually not just sexual infidelity that causes relationships to crack up. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What is emotional fidelity or intimacy and what does it look like? What allows a couple to grow it between the two? Does it happen by accident or is it open to nurturing? Or does it happen because it is propped up by obligations as a result of the physical relationships that exist between and around them?
Emotional fidelity happens for its own sake and requires effort exclusively on the part of the couple. Nobody (a child, parents, or wealth) can help do that step for them. Fortunately or unfortunately.
When I do arrive at this stage of my sessions with participants in understanding the interrelationships between fidelity and prevalence of HIV/AIDS, and I present the question, “What is emotional fidelity or itimacy?”, I get the following responses, each time, without fail:
Trust (that I expect my partner trusts me, or I should be able to trust him)
Care (that my partner cares for me)
Loyalty (that my partner is loyal to me)
Compassion (that my partner shows compassion to me)
Sexual pleasures (that my partner allows me to reach that pleasure for me)
Passion, lust (that I must enjoy these)
Respect (that my partner should respect me)
Love (that my partner should love me) … we should love each other, but that I’d love him when he shows his love me.
Listens (that my partner listens to me)
…. And so on, more or less in that order.
Interestingly, while the list appears seemingly innocent, take a closer look at it when we include the words that appear in parenthesis. These are usually not voiced in the first instances. What do you notice?
We had hoped these emotions would happen for oneself rather than for our partner. So it would be not be a case by as much of compassion that I present to my partner as much as compassion that I expect my partner shows me. It is not by as much the respect I accord to my partner, by as much as what I expect my partner to accord to me. If they do it for me, then I shall do it for them. Then it becomes mutual. Otherwise. No!
Yet, relationships thrive, when the attention is on meeting the emotional needs of my partner rather than of myself (and, don’t read this part alone aloud to your partner! (smile). Read the whole article together, if that is possible).
What are the emotional needs of my partner? Would they be the same as mine?
Let me present two words here. “Care” and “Trust”. Both words describe emotions. But which word describes best an emotion that when that need is met for her, helps her feel even more so like a woman. And a man a man. Both emotions are needed, but which one stands apart for each gender?
Would that emotion be care or trust for a woman? Most can agree and men are quite clear of it each time, that a woman feels most like a woman is when she sees “her man cares for her”. Yes, mothers ‘take care of their sons and daughters’. But when the daughter grows up and she has her own children, and may take “care of her son”, she is happiest when she receives care from her husband or boyfriend.
And a man feels at his best, when he sees that his woman “trusts him”. Sometimes, as women we do to others what we expect them to do for us. And so, she may end up ‘taking care of him’, thinking should the more she ‘cares for him’ that more he would ‘take care of her’.
But a man does not need care from his woman. Otherwise he sees his mother in his woman. He needs our trust which would allow him to grow and feel more so like a man. The less he enjoys the trust from his woman, the less he learns to feel like a man. And therefore “stays as a ‘boy’ to be taken care of”. This stunts his emotional development as a man.
How can we be sure these are indeed what best describes the emotional needs of the respective genders? How do we tell? Think what we notice happen in our own relationships?
Also men and women keep different scoring systems. When a man does an act of ‘giving’ to his woman, the score he accords for his act depends on the size of the gift. If say the man takes his woman for a vacation, in his books he has scored a lot of points.
But the woman keeps a different scoring system. Be it the gift is big or small, she accords one point. So, if the man brings her 24 roses or 1 rose, to her she accords 1 point for that act of giving he made to her.
So here’s the trick. Instead of giving her 24 roses (and his book he records 24 points) at one time, bring her one rose but do it 24 times over a period of time. That will be 24 points in her book. What does this mean? What is more important to her is not the size of the gift but rather the consistency in the act of giving.
She could sometimes come across as being ‘expensive’ but all she is trying to do is ‘to make up for the acts of giving that were not done in the past. Hard as it seems, women can be easy. We would need to understand the other genders’ emotional needs first for a more cordial relationship.
The physical needs of the two genders may be similar. We all need warmth, food and shelter. But when we attempt to cross the relationship into the emotional realm, and attempt to meet the emotional needs of the opposite gender, we meet in the differences, and not in the similarities.
So it is easy to get away by saying “he is not my type” or “she is not my type”. It is actually truer than we believe it to be.
“Women mistakenly expect men to react and behave the
way women do, while men continue to misunderstand
what women really need.” Dr Gray
– Author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”
So who would need to start meeting the needs of the other gender first? Would it be that the woman shows trust in her man first, before he begins to accord care to her. Or would it be vice-versa?
And then there are five other types of emotional needs that are different for men and women. What do you think they are?
What do you see is the impact of couples who are able to meet and build emotional intimacy with each other on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the country? What would prevent them from building such levels of intimacies?
These will be the subject of the column’s discussion for next week. Happy discussing and discovering with your family and friends!
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a systemic strategy development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518.
As it appeared in the Botswana Sunday Standard on May 26, 2013
Nevertheless, a question that has crossed millions of minds and tons of conversations around the globe. In sports clubs, in tea-gardens, at pubs, at market places and at bus-stations. Between girlfriends and among boys and men. Regardless of gender.
And we have thrashed this question in and out on various media at various stages of our lives. As teenagers, as young adults, as married persons, as elders, even as institutions. Sometimes, we would choose not to go there, because, we believe that it is either too difficult to get there or evokes difficult emotions or we see things that are difficult “to change” when we do get there. Regardless of our professions.
And when we think we have got it, despite past experiences, it escapes us. Once again. Regardless of age.
But to be honest with each other, we really do not ask what causes fidelity!
We typically focus on why infidelity happens (happened to us). Not fidelity.
We get what we want. Knowing what we do not want, does not help us learn to build what we want or yearn for.
We may be ready to ‘tackle the consequences’ but as long as we keep creating the causes, we will have to continue to tackle the consequences.
This question, what causes fidelity, began to be important to us last week. This was, when after exploring and uncovering what causes the prevalence of HIV/AIDS to rise, we recognised that fidelity inspite of non-abstinence or of not applying condoms; it had a sure-fire (guaranteed) way of bringing prevalence figures down.
I shared a discussion I would usually have in my workshop programmes when we tackle this topic, that, “Should two individuals, both HIV positive stay sexually fidel to each other, would that lead to increased levels of transmission of the HIV virus to individuals outside of the couple’s relationship. That is, in spite of unsafe sexual practices with each other?
And the answer would be quite simply …. No!
For all. Regardless of age, professsion or gender. Immediately! Except for the pair, there would be zero transmissions beyond them. Something, a lot of nations and individuals easily aspires to and wishes it could happen for them but thinks it is difficult to reach. Yet, it really isn’t that difficult to figure this one out.
This work is relentless in wanting to understand what influences such actions. It is easier to dismiss it off and ‘say we require a change in behaviours’. But if it stays on easier to say it than to do it, then we have not yet put a finger on to it to understand what would make a sufficient difference. It was too simple! Which is why we are led back in (to the problem).
I also shared that from a systemic perspective, the causality of HIV/AIDs as a phenomenon will be no different from that of one country to another! Be it that the phenomenon is happening in India or Europe or China or here in Botswana, South Africa or Russia or the Americas. Despite races or nationalities.
Why did I say that?
These circles of causality occur naturally and they prevail despite what we as individuals may appear to look like ‘on the outside’. The ways we think and emote within, despite the boundaries we draw across the globe are not that very different. Be it the hatred or joys we see as happening in China or Zimbabwe or Venezeula or the Artic or even between individuals as partners may manifest outwardly as looking differently. But the emotions, and therefore the thinking and the behaviours stay true to the same.
The circles of causality are a presentation of how these aspects (namely emotions, behaviours and actions) interrelate within us and across each other. Once these reinforce or feed themselves, or as we say locks themselves in, be they positively or negatively, the reasons or causes that appear in the cycle stay the same.
This takes us beyond the unequivocal blame we square on the ubiquitous influence of ‘truck drivers’. And yet, ‘this’ could be anyone. Some-ones from “outside but who was driving through” or we might say, being sexually indiscriminate or infidel with each other.
Yet, when it happen, it does not happen without a reason. It is whether we see it (the reason) or we don’t. When we do understand the reason, it now becomes easier for change to happen. Hard as it may be, to accept the reason.
And so, the question is, “what causes sexual fidelity”? What encourages its growth? What discourages it? Where does that begin?
Couples anywhere, enjoy a type of intimacy that does not quite match up in the same way in relationships as we have with someone outside it or when we keep more than one intimate relation. It is the only relationship that enjoys the following characteristics:
The relationship is ‘not given’. It needs to be learnt. My relationship with my brother is given. But my relationship with my husband is not given. I did not “grow up” with him. It has to be learnt. I invest effort to learn about him;
It enjoys an intimacy that goes beyond physical relations as we could with our parents and siblings, and especially beyond the obvious sexual one. It is the only relationship that enjoys intimacy with another human being that spans, sexual intimacy to emotional (learning of our respective pasts) to mental (ways of our thoughts) to spiritual (that is not religious). All of them with the same person at the same time. Sometimes, the experience is referred to as being almost celestial or heavenly. Sexual experiences become more enjoyable then. Couples who do not ‘graduate beyond’ sexual activities rarely reach such a stage or enjoy it. It takes time;
It is the only relationship that helps us learn to open our ways of thinking to include that of another. Family relations reinforce current or familiar ways of thinking within the box. Intimate relations are the only relationship of its kind that helps us learn to ‘step out of our boxes’. No other relationship can help us do that. The more we do so, the more we learn to do that with relations outside of the family. This becomes key to organizational and economic and international growths;
It is the only relationship that helps preserve and grow our feminine and masculine emotional qualities to their ultimate peaks. The woman feels (and not just looks) most like a woman and the man as a man.
It is a relationship that starts small and grows over time, over a lifetime. For the reasons above. Not because our wealth has become inextricably tied up.
What allows a couple to reach such stages that goes beyond sexual fidelity to emotional fidelity? What does emotional fidelity look like?
Sometimes we say, it is not easy for couples to enjoy sexual fidelity till they learn to enjoy emotional intimacy together. Without emotional fidelity, do not expect sexual fidelity to happen that easily! It does not.
So does emotional fidelity happen by accident or can it be learnt?
This will be the subject of the column’s discussion for next week. Happy discussing and discovering!
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a systemic strategy development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana May 19, 2013, edition.
From a systemic perspective, the causality of HIV/AIDs as a phenomenon will be no different from that of one country to another! Be it that it is happening in India or Europe or China or here in Botswana, South Africa or Namibia. Despite races or nationalities or professions.
The circle of causality reinforces or feeds itself, negatively, perhaps at different rates (some slower, others faster), but the reasons or causes that appear in the cycle will be the same.
The reason for transmission of the virus however, for an individual may differ from one person to another. That’s from the perspective of a medical doctor. That’s what he sees. But the systemic causality of the phenomenon will be the same across all them.
Systemic thinking is not interested in the former. It’s focus and attention is on the latter.
And what would you say this means from a systemic perspective for nations that show low levels of the epidemic numbers? This would mean that the circle of causality is reinforcing positively rather than negatively or we say virtuously in their instances. It is the same cycle, just reinforcing positively.
Each time the circle of causality reinforces or as we say the causes feed themselves as a cycle, the community or the country experiences increasingly negligent levels of infections despite the levels other nations may be experiencing around the globe. And most importantly, they achieve those results with little or no effort (and certainly no resources) on their part.
Whether it is good news or bad news, the cycle of causality will be the same.
This series of articles that we have just begun here, seeks to uncover what is the circle of causality in the case of HIV/AIDs as a systemic or national phenomenon.
Please note however, the doctor, needs to continue to treat or advice the patient, nevertheless. However, treating a patient will not treat (or reverse the effects of this phenomenon) as a nation. The cycle will continue to run its course until we treat the cycle with a systemic solution.
That’s not a medical perspective. It requires the perspective of the nation. The latter cannot absolve itself from being a part of the solution here.
In last week’s article, we explored and uncovered the following:
Prevalence Levels ß New Infections (identified or otherwise) Levels ßLevels of Transmissions ß ?
And then I left you with the question,” what causes the levels of transmissions to go up?” Notice again, I did not ask, what caused a transmission. Instead, the question seeks to understand what causes its relentless upward trend.
And then I clarified the question further by asking which one of the above did you (and your circle of family and friends) think was the MAIN REASON? … the 20% that contributes 80% of the causes!
And I offered five options: Was it unsafe sexual practices? Would it be mother-to-child transmissions? Would it be unsafe use of tainted needles? Or is it accidents and wounds? Or was there another reason?
I have posed this question each time with various groups for possibly over thousands of participants. And there is resounded one unequivocal answer. I am sure you have guessed it too!
Most, quite easily vouch that the answer is, sexual intercourse. And should we take you the readers of this newspaper and continue to make that count, we are quite sure that we will arrive at the same answer.
Now, to see that ‘sexual intercourse’ as the “main river” that adds to the “ocean of HIV/AIDs prevalence”, was important. Here’s why.
When I do this activity with a group of medical practitioners who are tasked to advance the prevention of transmission of the disease from mother to child, it begins to dawn on them that while they work hard at preventing the transmission of the virus to the child from its mother, yet that child when it grows up, it did not have a way to control the transmission of the virus to itself through its own sexual practices. The child (and that is all of us) has not learned to save itself from the virus. It just happens. Sometimes, before we reach our teens! This clarity floors these organizations every time.
What is the implication of understanding this on resources and effort? It literally means money down the drain for them.
Why do we do that?
While it was a necessary correction, it was still an easier and costlier route. We would choose this way, because, trying to curb transmission through sexual practices, was a more difficult process, and in our minds, and almost impossible task.
Yes, it is impossible. That is, if we see all solutions as about controls and monitoring others.
When we are faced with such a systemic situation, it requires learning to work with levers that lead to individuals taking actions for themselves. This way of thinking is perhaps new for us.
In short, it means, we need to learn how the individual would make those decisions. Whatever, the reason that leads one to take a decision, when the reason is “not there” it would lead one to decide to take a different course of action. For oneself!
It is more difficult process to get there. No doubt.
Unfortunately, however, it is the reality.
When we face that reality, we also learn to face solutions that work. And when, we get there, it becomes very simple.
So shall we carry on uncovering the reason in the cycle?
So, the next question is what causes transmissions by sexual practices to go up?
Let me frame this differently. In my workshops, I would typically ask a question, “Should two individuals, both HIV positive stay sexually fidel to each other, would that lead to increased levels of transmissions to individuals outside of the couple’s relationship. That is, in spite of unsafe sexual practices with each other?
And the answer would be quite simply …. No! Yes, you are right!
Except for the pair, there would be zero transmissions beyond them. Something, a lot of nations easily aspires for it to happen but thinks it is difficult to reach. Yet, it really isn’t that difficult to figure this one out.
Taking this reasoning beyond the obvious reason, lies in asking the question, what causes or encourages the behaviour of discriminate sexual relation by a couple with each other?
Perhaps you may ask, what is that? It would be the act of engaging in sexual relationship with one person that lasts beyond evenings to a lifetime of days. Hard as it may sound, we would otherwise refer to as fidelity.
So the next question is, “what causes sexual fidelity”? Would it need controls? What encourages its growth? What discourages it?
We all seem to know what causes infidelity.
But what causes fidelity? Where does that begin? What do you think? What does your wife (or girlfriend) think?
This will be the subject of the column’s discussion for next week. Happy discovering!
Does it really matter that we know all of the causes of the viralness or we need to figure the ONE? Yes, it matters that we figure the “main river”.
It makes all the difference between working hard and working smart.
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a systemic strategy development consultant currently developing her practice with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her articles and programmes at https://www.facebook.com/SystemicThinkingColumnist or call DID: 3931518.
As it appeared on The Sunday Standard May 12, 2013 edition.
It has been a while. As the articles grew, we took the time to consider an appropriate site for the column. That search is on-going. However, for now, the column and I is here and we are glad we are back with you!
The column showcases a work that leads by learning to understand persistent issues of systemic or national concern and develop strategies to mitigate them. These strategies are typically not run-of-the-mill solutions because had they worked in the past, we would not be facing these issues today globally. When a problem is ‘solved’, it will work not to come back. Period.
And when it does come back, it is a sign we have yet to understand what’s causing the problem. It is an indication that the search is not over as yet.
We will use this thought to begin to understand the viral nature of HIV/AIDs that has caused epidemic proportions in its behaviour and consequences around the globe.
How did it grow the way it had done so far? Both with and without our control? What is the ‘gaspipe, outside of the medical domain’ that keeps bringing more of these cases back on into the health sector? And why does it continue to resist our efforts to control it despite works by multi-sectoral efforts. It seems to behave, almost ubiquitously as in “till deaths, do us part”?
The story today has gone way beyond sex workers or truck drivers, because infections happen regardless. Had such “acts” not persisted beyond these two sectors, the mere non-action would slow down or even stop the infection in its track. However, we know this is not the case. Infections have now gone from beyond one area and one country, to countries across lands and inspite oceans. It has transcended boundaries, including age, gender, professions, and so on.
Interestingly, this story now also holds keys to learning to grow any kind of phenomenon. Even how as nations we may learn to grow our economies and businesses. Why do I say that? Read on.
While the unintended consequences of HIV/AIDs are not desirable, it is nevertheless exhibiting the nature of growth behaviour ‘at its best’. Think viruses that started off as one, in very small numbers, and yet today the number has grown to billions in the millions of us. It has grown to an extent that the question today is no longer, ‘when would we turn the tide around’ but rather ‘can we turn the tide’? It is no longer a trickle, a brook or a river. It is turning into an ocean.
And we have tried turning it around by all means possible. Genuinely. For decades.
We have poured and continue to do so billions of dollars around the globe to ‘fight the war’ of HIV. And that trend has grown relentlessly year on year as organizations around the world jump on the bandwagon to save the numbers of lives increasingly affected by it.
Tongue-in-cheek, it even feels the more money we pour in to fight it, the more we seem to be sucked in by it both as those who are infected and those who need to react to the infected either as medical and research personnel, medical service providers or fund coordinators and not forgetting the rest who are caregivers in the family.
These are the hands and feet that would otherwise have worked hard at growing the country’s economic productivity and sit on the revenue side of the equation of an economy.
Today, rather these resources sit on the side of the cost equation. And this adds up to the cost (hidden and worse blind ones) sometimes more than just of the investments we make. They would need to be added in.
Yet the prevalence (of old + new infections) is not abating downwards at the rate investments are scaling — upwards. The catching up game does not appear to stop.
Is it a stubborn problem? Yes, it is! Is there a vicious cycle causing the persistence? You bet there is!
If the problem has not turned around consistent with the effort we have applied to it, then it is an indication that we have not quite understood what is causing its vicious nature. Understanding this causality is the first step to solving the problem.
We know that when a virus transmits from one individual to another, it can cause an (new) infection.
That’s a medical side of the story of the disease. In systemic thinking, however, we want to understand what is causing the recurrence of the transmission that is pushing prevalence upwards, despite differences in time, location and people? And inspite of different programmes, initiatives and endeavours.
We also want to know the consequences of such prevalence rates and importantly to understand ways they (re-)feed(-back) or reinforce the cycle. These questions are keys to developing strategies that help turn stubborn issues around. For good.
Yes, we know it is sex (-ual) transmission. Yet, not all sexual activities lead to a transmission of the virus. Yes? (More later. Food for thought for now.)
So we have for now explored the topic around a few issues, let’s begin to answer the question. What causes the relentless persistence of HIV/AIDs as a phenomena that feeds (grows) the prevalence figures of nations?
So, let’s start with the question, what causes the prevalence to go up?
The first answer I usually get, hands down, is “sex”! Well, it’s true. We will get there but let’s stay with the question. Prevalence is caused by new infections. When numbers of new infections go up, prevalence goes up. When infections go down, prevalence goes down too.
The next question is, ‘what causes infections to go up’? Again, I get the response, well, the answer is obvious! “Sex”! Smile. It’s true. But as I would say, stay with the question. Infections are caused by transmission. If there are no transmissions, there are no new infections. But when numbers of instances of transmissions go up, so does infection.
The next question? You know it, now. What causes transmissions to go up? Notice, I did not ask, what caused a transmission. Well, stepping back, we might say, well there are many ways these may happen. It can be sexual behaviour (such as unsafe sexual practices), mother-to-child transmissions, unsafe use of tainted needles, accidents and wounds, and there could be more.
Here’s a tip.
In a stubborn or a recurring problem, we do not include all of them as causalities. And here’s why.
By the time, circle of causality becomes vicious 0r recurring, one of these factors have become the reason for its persistence. It is that ‘main river’ that brings the cycle back and reinforces itself continuing to push the upward tide with each cycle of causality. We say it is now exists as a self-seeking (helps itself) cycle of growth. It is not a cause with multiple factors.
So which one of the above do you think is the MAIN REASON? … the 20% that contributes 80% of the causes!
I am sure you know which one it is. Still, do feel free to check out the question with your family and friends. What do they think?
Would it be unsafe sexual practices? Would it be mother-to-child transmissions? Would it be unsafe use with tainted needles? Or is it accidents and wounds? Or is there another reason?
This will be the subject of the column’s discussion for next week. Happy discovering!
Ms Sheila Damodaran works as a national strategy development consultant currently focussed on working with national planning commissions in southern Africa. She welcomes comments and queries for her programmes at DID: 3931518 or at sheila@loatwork.com.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday Jan 20, 2013 edition.
Change Happens at the Speed of Thinking about the Whole Rather than of Our Individual Parts
How did “Uncle solve the problem”? Ignoring is not solving.
Should we see a fire at the corner of our house, caused say, by dry leaves, we know what to do.
We would find ways to put it out by cutting off the supply of oxygen that feeds the fire. We can do that because our effort to correct it, i.e. beating it down with sticks, or throwing sand or water on it can be greater than the effort by the fuel that feeds the fire. It is easy said and done.
But imagine this, if the fire is caused by a gas pipe from afar that is growing steadily in size and supplies fuel at a rate faster than the effort we can make to put it out. Dousing it even with foam by fire engines, will not make much difference. And, to make matters worse, we can’t see the pipe. This is now easier said than done.
The thinking that says, “Put out the fire” stops working here. It even becomes life threatening.
The thinking that says, “What is causing the fire?”, and deal with the cause, now becomes relevant to change. Even lifesaving.
Many persistent issues of the day are like the second type of fire. There are things happening, beyond what we can see (the obvious fire) that keeps ‘feeding the issue’. These keep bringing the problem back, stronger each time.
I find one murderer or rapist or fraudster or thief and put him behind bars. That does not mean that another is not ‘being created’ somewhere else.
Any police (as well as military and judiciary) organizations in the world have not only existed but grown as much as they have today, because we have not asked the question, “What is causing the fire?” At least not yet.
We had been with the question, “How do we put out the fire that we can see?” It is a necessary correction but not a solution. We would need to expect the problem to return despite our efforts.
There are tons more in every nation: water shortages, health concerns, industrial growth, unemployment, destitution, labour conflicts, economic diversification (or its lack of), wildlife diseases, poaching, land use conflicts, food security, pollution, divorces, work productivity, HIV/AIDs epidemics, floods, droughts, debts, household income levels, crop production, just to name a few are examples of persistent issues. These are issues political parties everywhere find ways to pick bones with each other and feed off its fire.
The story of the mother-in-law (MIL) and daughter-in-law (DIL) (The full ‘Healing Poison’ story first appeared in the column on Jan 13, 2013), is a classic example of the second kind of fire.
We find the story of MIL-DIL resonate the world over. They do not share the same MIL or DIL, but they share the same story. They do not enjoy a relationship the way they do with their own mothers or daughters which typically grows better over time. In some societies, they may even go so far as to kill off each other. Literally. In others, we avoid this phenomenon altogether by choosing not to marry at all.
But choosing to ignore it (e.g. staying apart), does not mean the problem is solved. It may postpone it by “sweeping it under the carpet”. But that does not mean the problem is gone. Should we “lift the carpet”, the problem is still there. Just out of sight. For now.
In the story, we know the uncle solved the problem. Quietly but surely. What would you say he did to keep it solved? Last week we explored the metaphor of the boiled frog and we said,
“For frogs to be boiled, the frogs must not know they are being boiled.
For change to happen (completely), change must not know it is happening.”
So, the uncle, boiled “the frogs” between MIL and DIL. What would you say he was boiling? Did you say their attitudes? Yes, you are right!
How did he do that? Remember, he was not even ‘at the scene of the crime’? How did he manage to change their attitudes, without managing (think performance management, coaching, mentoring, etc.) their performance?
And I mentioned there were ten things that happened in the story between MIL and DIL In this edition we will explore a few of them. What were they?
No judgment
Most uncles, should the DIL complain to him about MIL, would either take things in his hand and set up a terse meeting with the MIL or take the DIL to task and say, that’s not how a DIL should behave and then set the rules.
How about this uncle? He says, “You want to kill MIL? Wait here, we will do it together!”
Should he have judged the DIL, it would have been quite easy for the DIL to say, “Wrong uncle! Go need to find the right one.”
What allowed him not to judge either side? Notice he paid less attention to what they said or did but rather to look for the vicious cycle that has now taken over and is ruling their lives viciously. He needed to find a way to ‘heal the circle of causality’ and turn it around. When the cycle turns around (cycles are both good and bad news), the events go away themselves. That’s the healing in the “Healing Poison” story.
Start small
Notice he created steps not to ‘jerk’ the system for a quick correction. Cycles do not respond to such corrections. Events may. But not cycles. Should he have called for an urgent meeting, ‘the frogs would have jumped out’. They would have either absconded the meeting or appears and agrees but does not carry out the actions (it is the same as absconding) to full.
He needed to boil their attitudes to change. To do so, he had to start small. How small was it? As small as a smile. The longer the cycle had been running, the smaller the action needs to be, to reverse the effects of the cycle. That’s the nature of causality.
Work smart with delays
The uncle devised a way for the DIL to continue with the act of smiling. To do so, he tricked her into believing that if she did not do carry out the act for six months, or tried to change things too quickly, somebody might suspect it is her.
Why? This is to allow, the timed needed for changes in the story to lead on in ways that give the people the choice to make their own change, as a result of changes that are happening to them by their realities.
Of course, the change between MIL and DIL will happen even faster when the two can see the circular causality that is causing them to run in circles. Just as the uncle could “see it”. Change will then happen in a snap! That’s how fast change can really be. But till we see the cycle, the change has not changed yet.
What do you think are the remaining seven things that happened in the story?
Next week, we open a brand new subject and deepen these lessons in turn. We will explore HIV/AIDs and what causes its viral nature regardless of anywhere in the world, be it India, China, Europe, America or here in Africa.
Meanwhile, google its behaviour of growth over time. Go back to the 1980s. What do you notice? Has it been stubborn? “What is causing the fire?” What does the gas pipe look like? And we know, it is not the truck drivers. Yet they do make an interesting metaphor for the cause. Smile.
Wishing you a great week ahead of discovery and learning.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday Jan 20, 2013 edition.
Change Happens at the Speed of Thinking about the Whole Rather than of Our Parts
What causes the change to stay changed?
If we have managed change and it has happened, it should not go back to its old ways. Yes?
If it does, then, change, as the meaning of the word stands, really has not happened. And there is a reason. We have not yet understood how change happens.
Over the past two editions of this column, we ran a story of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and with the uncle’s help; we saw the relationship between the two turn from that which was sour and ugly to one where they have now became the best of friends.
Here’s a before and after summary of that story.
Change over time:
BEFORE THE START OF THE STORY
AFTER THE STORY ENDS
Mindset
“All mother-in-laws (MIL) are bad!”“All daughter-in-laws (DIL) are here to rob me of my family’s wealth”
“Mother-in-law can be my friend”“What great DIL I have! What would we do without her?”
Structure:
Pattern of quality of their relationship over time
Event
Gets upset with each other
Slamming of doors
DIL washes her own laundry
MIL does cooking for herself
MIL sits down and has tea with DIL
Both go for shopping and movies together
They have picnics with both their families
I left you with a question at the end of that story. How did the story help to bring about the changes in their situation?
Here’s a quick summary of the story:
As DIL began to smile at her MIL every night while she served her with a hot cup of milk, and MIL drank the milk it led MIL to feel more energized over time. As a result, things began to look up for the MIL who returns favour by cooking supper for her DIL. This leads to a chain of reactions that eventually sees the boss of the DIL praising her for a job well done with promises of a job promotion.
As things began to look up for DIL, she returns the favour to MIL by spring-cleaning the whole hose. When the MIL returns, she could not believe her eyes how all of their lives have transformed in a short four months and decides to call it truce between them. I left the story at the point MIL sitting down with DIL on the verandah enjoying their tea together.
How did a story that was going nowhere except horribly wrong (think crop or animal wipeouts, or budget deficits, or unemployment, or destitute not graduating or crimes not abating) turn around and as we speak enjoy a splendid outcome with all signs that anything from the past is now no more. How was that possible? What caused it?
Question is what caused the circle to stay turned around?
The Boiled Frog
Have you heard of the parable of the “boiled frog”? It is a metaphor that is very commonly used in Systems Thinking circles to understand how change happens in reality and to appreciate why corporates and nations die-off suddenly or what causes them to grow from strength-to-strength. In fact, we can’t appreciate systemic thinking without first appreciating this concept.
Boiling Frog (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)
Many changes when they start, is not sudden or abrupt as many of us believe. They start very slowly and changes are often not perceptible on our radars and sometimes even dismissed off as one-off events. And yet, these small changes over time, often build themselves up eventually to crisis-level proportions.
It is a maladaptation on our part to recognize gradually building threats. Our minds and bodies are typically conditioned to see and react when a fire has become large. Not when it starts small.
How do we boil a frog? Yes, a frog! Not quite the ones we see around here. But the green slippery, wet species that live in water (not sand). Because if we attempted to catch them, they slip through our fingers. Literally. If we attempted to throw them in hot water, they jump off easily. So how then do we boil them (I did not ask, how do we eat them, smile).
Well, to boil them (like any change), it has start with where the frog is. They are cold-blooded animals and so when we place them in water, we place them in a cold pot of water. They sit there quietly. They are comfortable there. And then?
Well, then, we start with ONE piece of hot firewood. Place it under the pot. And since, it is only one piece; the water does not boil over suddenly. It boils gradually. So gradual that it allows the frog to adapt itself to the new temperature. It thinks to itself, “Haa … winter is over and spring has finally come.” But it sits in the pot. It does not jump out.
And then we bring on another piece of firewood. Again, the temperature in the pot rises gradually, but persistently. The frog has time to adapt again to its gradually changing surroundings. It even says to itself, “Summer is already here”. But it stays put in the pot.
And then, we bring on another piece of firewood. What do you think, the frog will say this time? You guessed it right! “Summer is really, really hot this times, is it not?” But it had time to adapt again. It is becoming groggy. But it stays put on the land, I mean, in the pot.
And when we bring on finally one more piece of firewood, well … the water is now boiling but the same frog that had first jumped out of the hot water when we first threw in it, continues to stay there. It does nothing. What has happened to it?
Well, it did not even know …. well, you know, died!
Why? Because the frog’s internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival is geared to sudden changes in his environment, not to slow, gradual changes. As a result, it did not react, and it got boiled.
Just as earth’s atmosphere when it warmed gradually over from the 70s nobody (on earth) thought much of it, because it was gradual and we adapted without being aware we were doing so. It was sub-conscious. While, we boiled (literally, sometimes), like the frog, the change too for the atmosphere, was boiling slowly, just like the frog in the parable.
For frogs to be boiled, the frogs must not know they are being boiled.
For change to happen, change must not know it is happening.
So, was the uncle, boiling “the frogs” between MIL and DIL? What was he boiling? Did you say their attitudes? Sure, you are right?
How did he do that? Remember, he was not even ‘at the scene of the crime’? How did he manage change, without managing (think performance management, coaching, mentoring, etc.) it?
There were ten things that happened in the story between MIL and DIL (refer to the story in the column’s edition dated Sunday Standard, Jan 13, 2013) that made the change possible. What were they?
This will make a great supper discussion with your own family, would it not? That will be the subject of discussion in Part V of this instalment.
Psst …. Are you still wondering what came of the liquid in the bottle? Well, the uncle admits later. It was not actually poison. It was Vitamin C. Yes! So the MIL is not only having a great relationship with her DIL, she is also now in the pink of health! Smile.
Wishing you a great week ahead of discovery and learning. Don’t forget the question? What were ten things that happened in the story between MIL and DIL that brought about a change in their lives?
Ms Sheila Damodaran, from Singapore and based here, is an international Strategy Development Consultant working with national planning commissions tasked with national strategy development. She welcomes comments at sheila@loatwork.com. For upcoming programmes, refer to www.loatwork.com/Senior_Leadership_Introduction.html.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday Jan 13, 2013 edition.
Change Happens at the Speed of Thinking about the Whole rather than of Our Part
What causes change to be real? Understanding it with a story: “The Healing Poison”
Hope all of you had fabulous New Year festivities with family loved ones! And of course, wishing all of you a bright and promising year in 2013!
Just before Christmas, this column began running the story of the uncle, the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. Over the holidays, I had many of you asking how does the story end. I am sure you have figured how it ends!
It was meant to illustrate how we turn around and solve persistent issues. These are issues that resist efforts to change. In short, for any causality cycle that is vicious, are they unemployment or greening the country or HIV or crime.
Well, here’s a recap of the beginning of that story.
The Story
Both daughter-in-law (DIL) and mother-in-law (MIL) started their relationship with each other really well. As we all do. Except over time, they find themselves in an increasingly difficult relationship! That happens too.
In frustration, the DIL shares her problem with her favorite uncle. She now believes if she gets rid of MIL, she would have got rid of the problem. She has come to her uncle to seek for help on how to get rid of her MIL.
The uncle advises her, giving her first a small bottle with some liquid inside, that she drops two drops of it in a hot cup of milk and present the cup of milk to her MIL. She must make sure that MIL drinks one cup for every night for the next six months.
And when she hands the cup of milk to her MIL, she must do so, with a smile. He assured her that by the end of six months, the MIL will be gone.
So, what do you think happened next?
Well, as difficult as it was now to smile at her MIL, the DIL had been so bent on getting rid of the problem; she decides to put the plan to action right away.
That night, just before her MIL approached her bed-time, she carefully boiled a cup of milk on the stove, dropped the two drops of the liquid her uncle gave her and she proceeded to her MIL’s room.
On the way, she spots a mirror, preens into it and tests her smile in the reflection. Happy with what she saw, she then knocks on the door and steps into her MIL’s room. With a smile. Just as the uncle prescribed it!
She then says, “MIL, I have prepared a hot cup of milk for you. I know how tired you must be after a hard day at work for all of us. Please drink it.
Being her first night at this, she left the cup of milk next to the MIL’s bedside and quickly walked out of the room. Except, she was not sure, if the MIL actually drank it. She could not sleep the whole night.
The next day, she made her way back to her MIL’s room. To check. True enough. The MIL had drunk the milk.
MIL had been tired and so she actually welcomed the drink. When she drank she had a restful sleep.
Smiling quietly, the DIL thinks, “Good one night down, six more months to go!” And so, the DIL resolves to make this a nightly ritual with her MIL for the next six months.
So, what do you think happened next?
Well, let’s switch the story over to MIL. What does she see? She sees her DIL present the cup of milk with a smile. And when she drinks it, she finds her sleep improves and she now sleeps like a baby. When she gets up in the morning, she is refreshed.
Over time, as her body rejuvenates, she finds herself completing the daily chores in a jiffy and even finds time to spend with her two grandchildren. In the past, she would feel tired to do so, but these days she enjoys their time together.
A few weeks later, as her moods begin to lift, she decides to gather a group of her close friends to dabble in her favourite past time – a round of cards. And because she sleeps better, she finds herself concentrating better on the game and soon learns to win better with each try.
Since they play for the money, after just a few weeks, she was learning to bring home a tidy sum of money. A few months on, she was actually, bringing in 500 pula each time! She was overjoyed. This was at month No. 2.
One afternoon, as she sipped her tea on the veranda, she began to realize that life indeed seems to feel different. She is energized these days and she is now enjoying her time with family and friends and she wondered, what caused it.
She then realized things had begun to change, from the time her DIL started giving her the cup of milk. She felt grateful for the action. And then, there is something about when our attitudes go up by themselves, our willingness to return that favour on our volition (choice), goes up too.
The next day, she decides she should return the favour to DIL. So that evening, when the DIL returns home, tired and hungry from work, she spots a hot piping supper on the table. She could not believe her eyes!
The MIL comes out of the kitchen and says to her, “I have prepared this meal for you. Do have it.” The MIL then pops back into the kitchen. Out of gratitude, the DIL sits down at the table, to have the meal. When the MIL comes out a few minutes later, she notices that the DIL has accepted the meal. She feels happy, and decides she will continue to make the meal for her DIL.
So, what do you think happened next?
Well, the DIL finds she does not need to make supper, she decides to use that time to help her children with their schoolworks. And because the mother has time to inspire their learning, the children find it easier to focus in the classroom, and soon find their grades improve.
When the grades began to grow, the mother finds herself better able to focus at the workplace. With improved focus, she finds herself diligent not just completing but also leading her work. When the boss notices the change in her, he is pleased and says to her, “Keep that up, and you will be promoted”. This was now month No. 4.
The DIL could not believe her ears! The boss had always been on her back, but these days, he is talking about her promotion! What happened? Her relations in the family and at work are improving and she has never been happier. What caused it, she wonders.
She then realizes that things began to change, when her MIL began to prepare her supper. She felt grateful for the action. And then, there is something about when our attitudes go up by themselves, our willingness to return that favour on our volition (choice), goes up too.
The next day, DIL decides, she should return that favour to MIL. MIL is already out of the house, playing cards with her friends. When she returns, with now 900 pula in her pockets and she crosses the threshold into the house, a gasp escapes her lips. She notices a very clean and tidy house! DIL has cleaned the whole house and she is stunned by its beauty. She says to herself, “What a great DIL I have!”
As she moves around admiring the newly spanked home, she begins to wonder to herself, “Why are we still quarrelling?”
And then she decides (herself), she is going to change things once and for all.
She quickly goes to the kitchen, boils two cups of tea and proceeds to look for her DIL. When she finds her, she sits down with her, and with a smile she asks, “Shall we call it truce?”
The DIL was delighted, of course! ….
What do you think happened next? Have things changed? For good?
This concept of managing change is new to most of us. We could escape ourselves by miring in addictions or resign to stay in depressions, but there is another way. And it can start with anyone or anywhere.
As we learn to see and turn the cycle around, the cycle takes over and helps to create new experiences that are felt by its participants. This gives birth to new attitudes from within the participants and therefore these lead to new actions by the participants themselves.
Since it is led by experiences that are real for them rather than suggested or set for them, the change will not revert.
Otherwise, nothing would have changed, would it?
Do you remember how it all started? Question is, what caused the change? What caused the circle to turn around?
This will make a great supper discussion with your own family, would it not? That will be the subject of discussion in Part IV of this instalment.
Psst …. Did you ask you want to know what came of the liquid in the bottle? That’s coming next week! Smile.
Wishing you a great week ahead of discovery and learning.
Ms Sheila Damodaran, originally from Singapore, is an international Strategy Development Consultant focussed on assisting national commissions tasked with strategy development. She welcomes comments at sheila@loatwork.com. For upcoming programmes, refer to www.loatwork.com/Senior_Leadership_Introduction.html.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday Dec 23, 2012 edition.
Seeing the Trees and the Forest
If the problem is solved, it should not come back. Period! We would be seeing results.
If it recurs, then this is a sign that we have not solved it. Yet. Period!
Last week, we ran a story of the occurrence (an event) of 9/11, and then we learned it was actually a re-ocurrence (pattern) of an issue that has now become persistent or as we say, stubborn. The event was not meant to be one-off.
Of course, we know that now.
The more one ‘did this’, the more the other ‘did that back’, which in turn led one to ‘do this’ and so on (see figure). Similar stories run between the eastern and the western worlds. Between locals and foreigners, between husband and wife, families, neighbours, communities, organizations, nations, between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, and so on. You can substitute A and B for any of the above, and it will explain its recurrence. Try it.
The purpose of the recurrences is to point to the need to learn of another way to solve stubborn problems. We learn these by watching its behaviour over time, even before our lifetimes.
Characteristics of vicious cycles
Firstly, the more the cycle runs viciously, the more it becomes expensive. Think the 2008 economic global recession. Some would say, we are still feeling its effects, today in 2012.
In circular causality there is NO starting or ending points. The root cause has a cause. I know this defies everything we have learned. This reasoning is important as it will help us appreciate that the starting point is not in any one part of the cycle.
For example, the thinking rainfall causes vegetation is part true. It is part true, because, vegetation too in turn causes rainfall. This can also mean we cannot get away by saying that the developed countries have ‘caused’ global warming. Their TVs and phones are in our homes. If we did not demand for them, they would not have been producing it.
But unlike a wheel that retards on friction, this one gathers its strength with each iteration of the cycle. It grows stronger.
The land appears drier. More youths walk on the streets for jobs. More adults succumb to HIV. School grades continue to decline. Couples divorce. Addictions increase. Crime and corruption increases. And so on. It is now behaving like a bullet that has just been released from its gun. It continues to stay on its course and resist our efforts to change it until we are able to see and learn to work with the cycle as a whole.
Yet, separately, both sides would find it difficult to see the interwoven and vicious nature of this circle of causality between the two.
It was obviously difficult for ‘Bush and Bin Laden’ to sit side-by-side with each other, to see for themselves this non-stopping (and vicious) nature of this cycle that keeps all of us in a spin. It is still difficult today. It happens to the best of us. Often, we become too busy either looking out at ourselves or at the other party. Yet, till we do so, the issue remains unresolved.
Ten years on, from 2011, we now know that this is true. How about ten years from today?
Lastly, the trick is not about working at it harder. We have done so exactly that since biblical times. Having said so, it will be difficult to appreciate this failure, in just seeing our lifetime of experiences.
The solution
But if this circle of causality is the real culprit, then blaming any one side of it will really not solve the problem. While we could blame the people or government or a sector separately for our woes, we really do so because it is the easier way out. It is easy because it is the part of the circle of causality that is obvious to us. We are usually oblivious to the rest of the the circle of causality.
Blaming is therefore not a solution.
Can vicious cycles of causality turn around by itself? No!
It is like a wheel that has been set into motion. Like a bullet released from the gun. It does not reverse its course on its own.
To solve it, first the circle needs to become more obvious to our perceptions.
The solution to this interwoven complexity then lies in working with the interwoven nature of the problem as a whole. Not directly at the problem per se or parts of the causality.
How do we do then treat these vicious cycles?
Here’s a story to illustrate how this may be done. This is Part I. Part II will be presented in the next insert.
The title of the story is, “The Healing Poison”.
A Story
This daughter-in-law (DIL) finds herself in a difficult relationship with her mother-in-law (MIL) (see figure)!
She (DIL) had done everything possible to try and bridge the gap between the two, except the more she tried, the worse their relationship seems to become. She has now arrived at a point where she has concluded that “The problem is mother-in-law (MIL). So, if I wish to get rid of the problem, then all I have to do is to get rid of mother-in-law”.
Except, it was not easy, to get rid of MIL. The more she tried, the more she worried that somebody might suspect it was her. One afternoon at wits end, as she sat down to rest, she suddenly thought of her favourite uncle. Someone, whom as she grew up took care of her problems for her and she gas come to respect him for his wisdom. She decided, she should pay him a visit the very next day to seek help to her current problem.
The uncle was delighted to see her. As they settled down, she starts talking. “What is happening?” asks the uncle. The DIL spills her beans. So when the uncle asks, “What do you want to do?”, she shares that she’s arrived at this conclusion that should we get rid of the MIL, the problem will be solved! The uncles probes and asks, so “What do you want me to do about this?” She quips, “I would like you to help me get rid of MIL!”
“I see. Wait here”, says the uncle.
A few minutes later, he pops back and this time, he is holding a small bottle with some liquid inside. He then adds, “Here’s what you need to do. Every day, drop two drops of this liquid, in a hot cup of milk. Present the cup of milk to her, one for every night for the next six months, and make sure that she drinks it.”
“Well, that’s easy. Is there anything else I have to do?”, asks the DIL.
“Yes, there is one more thing you have to do.” “What is that?” she asks.
“Well,” adds the uncle. “Every night, when you present the milk to your MIL, you must make sure that you smile. Because if you do not, somebody might suspect it was you.”
Hmm …. that’s going to be tough. To smile. “Are you sure she will be gone, at the end of six months?” “Yes!”, assured the uncle.” “Well, in that case, I shall do it!”
On that note, the uncle hands the bottle to her and wishes her well. As the DIL turns quickly to walk back home, you could almost detect a twinkle in the uncle’s eye and a smile on his lips!
Could the uncle see the circle of causality between the two? Does he see the trees and the forest at the same time? How about the DIL? The MIL? How do you think the story would end?
These will be the subject of discussion of this column in the new year. Happy discovering and learning with your family and friends over the holidays!
Merry Christmas and of course, wishing you ahead, may everything you wish for, become real for you in the New Year!
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday Dec 16, 2012 edition.
Dynamic Complexity vs. Detail Complexity
We face problems daily. And, we do not doubt our ability to deal with them.
Sometimes, this confidence can pull wool over our heads that we can deal even with the stubborn ones, in much the same way. We would say to ourselves, just work harder. We will overcome it.
Stubborn problems are issues that despite efforts to manage or contain it, while it first they may look like they are relenting, the results are short-lived (two-to-three years). And, then it comes back again, this time harder and faster.
For example, in our efforts to survive arid conditions, we engage in pastoral farming. Except, over time, such practices wipe out the greens (as when livestock consume grass) that would otherwise encourage rainfall. In some countries, this means it gets only summer rainfall. This causes conditions to become arid even further.
Notice, however, when droughts strike, they wipe out the livestock numbers. This is an attempt by the system to do a correction, so as to recover itself. The correction by the system is usually not that visible to us. We now have a stubborn problem in our hands.
Can you tell, who comes across as more stubborn?
I am sure you can think of lots of other examples of stubborn problems. Economic growth declines. Lack of wage increases. Divorce rates. Rainfall levels and/or water tables (Nov/Dec 2012 series of this column). New HIV/AIDs infection (coming in Jan 2013). Unemployment (October 2012 series). National school grades. Performance in agriculture, manufacturing and retail sectors. Economic diversification. Crime. Obesity. Diabetes. Road accidents. Poaching. Budget deficits. Wars. These are some, among others.
Firstly, the stubborn nature in such issues is usually not that easily visible at the onset, till we have had to face them for years on end, sometimes even decades. It escapes our attention even for the best of us when tasked to manage them for the short-term (three-to-five years).
As legislatures, managers and enforcers we believe in the power of our word or our hands and feet to make a difference to such problems. We become effective at doling out corrections each time the problem surfaces.
And when we fail to do so, it looks like project implementation is not taking off or the officer or the function is not performing well. The enemy is out there. Or, we may sometimes, shrug them off as ‘things that are beyond our borders and therefore our control’.
Where such problems exist, managing one time occurrences are easy. Recurrence makes them tough.
Two kinds
However, to understand why such problems resist change, we need to first understand what causes their persistence. To do so, it helps to appreciate that there are two kinds of complexity. Detail and dynamic complexity.
Most organizations (and professions) are designed to deal with the first kind. Detail complexity. As it would be, when one “drills down”. How many baskets did we sell last month? What was our profit this year? How many permits did we issue? How many crimes were committed?
We are not quite organized to deal with the second. What causes sales or profits to keep falling? Or why does crime keep rising?
But first, what does the word complexity mean here? The dictionary says “it consists of related parts” (as in composites) or “complicated” (as in a complex problem).
But it is perhaps the Latin word “complexus” from which this word derives its meaning that sets it apart for us. It says “embracing, interwoven”.
To see the interwoven nature of a problem, it would require our minds to “zoom out” from the problem. However, our years of drilling our minds down to details, makes the experience of letting go of the problem to see its dynamic nature, a new and rather anxious one for many of us. It is understandable.
However, when we do not see the interwoven nature of these issues, it makes some of the most persistent issues of the day, well … remain stubborn. Yet the solutions to some of our most pressing issues lie in learning to see and work with this interwoven nature. There is no easy way out. No shortcuts. No magic pill. Unfortunately.
First, let’s see what the interwoven nature of a problem would look like.
Interwoven nature of reality
We shall use an example.
Let’s go back to 2001. 9/11: The day when the two planes hit the World Trade Centre. Notice what happened. Overnight, airports around the world responded in exactly the same way. First stunned. And then a mad scramble to ‘shore its security’. Yes?
Overnight, we saw passengers snake their way over two-hour waits to security screens. No belt, shoe or stone were left unturned. Do you remember those days?
One passenger underwent several levels of security screenings. A typical airport would have thousands of passengers passing through its doors in a single day. In a month or in a year, we would say well, that was a lot of work!
What would you call that kind of complexity? This is what we refer to as ‘Detail Complexity’.
Most professions and performance management systems have their focus on this.
Systemic Thinking on the other hand, focusses its attention on ‘Dynamic Complexity’.
Let’s go back to the same context.
To find the dynamic complexity we start by asking, ‘why did we do what we did’? Why did we build those screens?
Well we say it was important to do that so as to ‘weed the terrorists out’.
Yet, should we go across to “the enemy”, and ask the question, “From your view, who would you say, is the terrorist?” What do you think would be their answer? Did somebody whisper, “The other side”. You bet!
So what do you notice?
Can you see what causes its recurrence? Some might add, the recurrence has been happening since biblical times. If so, will doing ‘corrections’ by one side acting on the other’ ever put a stop to the other side doing its corrections to us? We know, that will not stop the problem. And continuing to fight ‘the other side’, becomes very expensive.
But notice this dynamic complexity view becomes clearer to see when we zoom away from the bustle of managing the activities at the airports.
Why is it important to see this inter-relationship? How then, do we handle such problems? How do we handle Dynamic Complexities?
This will be the subject of the 2nd part of this article.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday Dec 9, 2012 edition.
Actions have consequences
When we bring a bowser to a place that needs water, is that a solution to, or a relief from the problem?
The test will be, if that’s the only time we have had to do it. Then it is a solution. Otherwise, it is a measure to stop the gap. But the gap remains there.
To take care of recurrent (persistent) nature of water shortages of a nation, we would have to take care of the water cycle. The whole cycle. Not parts of it (as excerpted from Part IV of this series).
Except the truth is, most of us and organizations, be they units, departments, sometimes even whole Ministries are not designed to do so. We work at best in parts. And, as citizens, we have not mandated anyone to do so, otherwise. Not as yet.
This allows stubborn problems to slip away from our focus, but they return to haunt us (you and I) more deeply each year. It is a reminder of work to be done as yet.
The water cycle is one example of circles of causality, we have been ignoring for decades. There are many more.
Nature of cycles
The cycle can go two ways (see Picture 1).
They could either reinforce positively or negatively. When the cycle reinforces positively, we would see the world around us look more like the Amazons. When the same cycle reinforces the other way, we would see the Sahara unfold right in front of our eyes. The outcomes may be different. But the circular causality is the same. The difference is in knowing which way the cycle is reinforcing for us?
Causes of reality
In the last article, I left a question: What are the consequences of the following actions on the water cycle? Run a test against the cycle. (see Table 1)
Table 1: What are the impacts over time of the following actions on the water cycle?
Action Plan
Given and constraints
Consequence
Impact
Growing drought-resistant varieties of crops?
Given there are already large-scale existence of drought-resistant plants that we grow in our gardens, and as vegetation and forests on the land.
Persistent growth of such varieties cause persistent reduction of transpiration by plants and therefore the atmospheric moisture in the region
Negative. Would see reduced levels of rainfall and water tables over time
Producing livestock that depend on greens?
When number of livestock exceeds carrying capacity of the land, it leads animals (including wildlife) to consume greens at rates faster than at which they may rejuvenate.
Sees wipe outs of greens and humus in the topsoil needed to see sustained growth of vegetation leading to non-sustainable levels of transpiration.
Negative. Would see reduced levels of rainfall and water table over time
Production of brews?
It can take up to ten cans of water to produce one can of beer. When the consumption of water exceeds the water table recharge levels, it causes the distance between the topsoil and the water table to increase.
Sees wipe outs of greens and humus in the topsoil needed to see sustained growth of vegetation. The land appears drier, leading to non-sustainable levels of transpiration.
Negative. Would see reduced levels of rainfall and water table over time
Drilling or deepening of boreholes?
When the rate of extraction of water table exceeds recharge levels, it causes the gaps between topsoil and the water table to increase.
Sees wipe outs of greens and humus in the topsoil needed to see sustained growth of vegetation. The land appears drier, leading to non-sustainable levels of transpiration.
Negative. Would see reduced levels of rainfall and water table over time
Presence of dams?
One dam-full of water could see up to two-thirds of its water evaporate from its surfaces.
The rate of evaporation is too fast unlike the more organic pace of transpiration by plants. The land appears drier, leading to non- sustainable levels of transpiration.
Negative. Would see reduced levels of rainfall and water table over time
What do you notice? While our actions were intended to be a response to declining water tables, continuing to take these actions, actually deepens the decline even further!
And as we do so, rainfall levels pushes downwards further. On the surface, it would look like as if public and private sector initiatives and project implementation efforts are not taking off (see Table 2).
Table 2: What are the consequences (from over 20, 30, 40 year periods ago) of a negatively reinforcing water cycle on the following?
Growing of crops and raw materials (primary industries)
Negative
Food security
Negative
Sustained growth of secondary industries
Negative
Sustained growth of tertiary industries
Negative
Capacity to diversify and develop a manufacturing base
Negative
Competitiveness / Growth of profit margins of retail sector organizations
Negative
Growth of tax revenues from agriculture, manufacturing & retail sectors
Negative
Growth of wages
Negative
Growth of employment in the formal sectors
Negative
Growth of household incomes
Negative
The reality is not merely at the mercy of the terrains we live in. They are also the consequences of our actions.
What is happening?
While these cycles are natural systems, they are leading us (yes, even the humans within the system) to take decisions, that reinforce the direction the cycle is already heading into. It is the self-seeking nature of the cycle that causes that to us.
Unknown to us, our thinking is now becomingset within these cycles. It happens to the best of us.
It is easy to blame organizations out there. It is harder to blame our thinking here. Systemic Thinking offers a way to catch ourselves being trapped in such thinking.
So, should we take off from the next corporate retreat with a solution that we come up with, or would we need to first uncover together the circle of causality that keeps returning these problems to us?
You are right! We need to be mindful of the latter.
What would we need to do, to solve the problem of water shortages then? The clue is in the circle of causality (see Picture 2).
Take another look at the cycle the parts before “Level of Rainfall” (bottom right corner). What do you see is leading up to it? Does it say “Level of vegetation and (top right corner) and further up in the cycle, “levels of surface and underground moisture”?
That becomes a systemic solution. “Have more greens, will rain more”.
This is the final segment of this five part series of this article. In the New Year, we will work on understanding the persistent nature of HIV, its causes and its effects and how we may turn it around.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday December 2, 2012 edition.
All is not what it seems
So was your answer similar to or different from that of your friends?
In last week’s discussion (Part III) we saw gradual increases in rainfall levels rose levels of vegetation as well. Vegetation begins to grow in sustained ways.
Still, this is linear thinking. Rainfalls cause vegetation. As farmers, most of us know this.
However, the key to understanding persistent or stubborn issues such as water shortages is when we see causality as a cycle (Part II). At this point, the thinking shifts from linear to being systemic.
So, I left you with a question to complete the process of thinking.
Should levels of vegetation (along with surface waters) increase, what do you think will be their consequence on rainfall levels?
Would we see declining levels of rainfall? Or could such levels increase (gradually) over time? Which types of vegetation would encourage rainfalls? And which ones don’t?
Check if you got the following answer. I am sure you did!
This is a story over time.
As more plants consume water and we see vegetation grow over time, we will begin to see a genre of plants that are broadleaved. As more of such plants thrive on the lands, such plants transpire water vapour into the atmosphere.
The more persistent are those levels, the higher the likelihood of levels of atmospheric moisture rising across the region. However, one plant, one hose-pipe or one dam does not make that change happen. Instead one would have to imagine, miles and miles of such vegetation happening across the region.
What do you think will be the result?
The higher atmospheric moisture now begins to encourage precipitation and eventually rainfall. Hence my title here, “have greens will rain”.
Positive Cycle
For rains to fall from above, it needs to figure a way to move from the earth’s surface to the atmosphere. Surface waters and vegetation when they come together facilitates that process. We as humans are parts of that instrument. The result will be more levels of rainfall over time.
Additionally, as more plants grow out their life cycle, at the end of their life, they decompose and add nutrients to the earth. This is key in helping the soil transform gradually from sandy to become loamy. The land learns to become greener. Potentially, we could even see the desert turn on its back.
As the supply of available water increases, cost of using it, will usually come down. The reverse (Part I) is also true. When the supply diminishes, the cost goes up. Unfortunately, we will not be able to push these prices down, till we figure a way to increase its supply. The answer can start in our backyards. Literally, for everyone.
So, increased levels of vegetation, raises the levels of rainfall. That’s your cycle (see Picture 2)! In this case we refer to them as virtuous cycles.
The reverse is also true.
Negative Cycle
When plants do not consume water (see also Picture 2), over time, they gradually learn to do the opposite of all of the above, as they fight or adapt to stay alive.
These adaptations may include developing layers of wax or hairs on the leaves and stems or shrinking the size of its leaves to become thorns. This is intended to prevent water losses so as to keep the water for themselves. This runs contrary to the nature of water, which is to flow. These plants have adapted the inherent nature of water for its survival. It does so at the expense of the system (or we say it has become individualistic).
The ultimate drought-resistant plant is cactus that grows in the hearts of most deserts of the world. Think what you see when you crack a cactus open. We see trapped water. The little water it takes in, it keeps it for itself.
When they begin to appear in our environment, it suggests that the soil on the surface has long lost its ability (to build loamy soil) to support sustained vegetation. Such variety of plants begin to thrive but causes rainfall levels to decline. This is since, they do not transpire. This causes the land to become even more dry which in turn encourages more of such plants. This latter view is often hidden from us until we surface this thinking as a cycle. Unlike earlier, these cycles are now becoming vicious in nature.
These vicious cycles do two things.
If we are not watching it, these cycles cause the issue to recur. They bring the problem back defying our efforts to correct it and do so with greater intensity in each iteration of the cycle. They typically throw our action plans off their courses. We see project implementation efforts as if they were failing.
These are what we see on the surface. That is the self-seeking nature of these cycles of causality. All is not what it seems.
Winning the Cycle
So how would we deal with such systemic directions and expect to win it?
To take care of the problem of water shortages, we would then have to take care of the water cycle. The whole cycle. Not parts of it.
What we saw here today is while your household may start greening your backyard, the combined effect of doing this collectively can be very powerful for a region on both the causes and consequences of rainfall for the region. This answer is not for just one country. We need to figure a way not to give up or be afraid to reach this out there in the region to everyone. I am sure you see that!
Given these, what would you say are the implications of some typical action plans that we make (and this happens to all countries), on such a cycle? Such as:
Recommending the growth of drought-resistant varieties of crops?
Producing livestock that depend on greens?
Production of brews?
Drilling or deepening of boreholes? Dam construction?
In each instance, would you see the rainfall levels increase or could it decrease over time? Would water table levels increase or decrease? What would be their consequences on growing of crops, on food security, growing of raw materials and in diversifying and developing a manufacturing base in the country? On employment?
Well, I am sure; you and your friends will figure these questions out!
This and their impact on the economy will be the subject of discussion next week in the final part of this series of the column on “Have Greens, Will Rain!” Till then have a lovely week discovering and learning!
This is the 4th segment of a five part series of this article. Each part will build on the earlier article to an eventual conclusion. We invite you to participate in the column as well as do your ‘own homework’ – searching and discussing the issue to build your own conclusions. Next month, we look at HIV, its causes and its effects.
As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on Sunday November 25, 2012 edition.
What goes around comes around. The Good and Bad.
Today we move to the more exciting bits of this series!
We will uncover the vicious cycle causing water tables to decline and learn how they contribute to growing aridness to seeing the economy turn around.
The take-away from last week was if we take care of this long-term position, it will take care of the fast-changing short-term worlds for us (food security to household incomes). We ignore this; the cycle brings the problem back harder and faster. But such long-term positions do not happen by accident. There is a reason.
I left you with a question at the end of the article.
What is the circle of causality that is pushing the water table down?
What did you see? Perhaps you saw different versions of it. Looking carefully, they were not quite circles but were straight-line thinking. Linear thinking makes up parts of circular causal thinking.
So, let’s take a few examples.
Sometimes I get, the water table is down because our consumption levels have gone up. This is because population numbers and therefore its related activities have gone up. And this is because … and sometime we stop here. In half-jest I proceed by adding, that ‘while fertility rates are up we are not dying fast enough’. At this point, the class roars into laughter. Mostly at the ludicrous reasoning.
We also know this is so, because we know of countries, whose population numbers and life expectancy are way higher than ours, yet do not see declining water table levels (see Picture 1).
Tips
So, here’s yet another tip. Any causal factor used in a vicious cycle has to stand the tests of space and of time. The above reasoning has not withstood the test of space.
At other times I see, water tables are going down because the rainfall levels are going down, and rainfall levels are going down because global warming levels are up. Global warming levels are up because ….
Usually at this point, I would pause the group and question it. Does this line of reasoning suggest that before the advent of global warming, while the water tables may have been higher then, than it is today, were its levels rising with each year. Which means to say the water tables in 1960s or 70s were higher than it was in the 50s?
Stillness settles in the room. Sometimes, it is because we do not know if this is true, mostly because we have not seen the data. But again, it sounds like another ludicrous reasoning. The reason is not passing the test of time.
So, what have been your thoughts about the cycle? Had it looked like the above? Not to worry. It happens to the best of us.
So, what then is the circle of causality that is causing the water table to go down? To uncover the cycle, we would need to learn to watch reality like watching a movie – as if without shutting our eyes. Snapshots will not do. So here we go.
Watching the reality like watching a movie
Rainfall is a part of the story. Yes? As more rains fall on the earth’s surface, they run off into rivers and seas. And where they fall on land it sinks through the soil and seeps downwards. As they do so, they help to recharge underground aquifers which in turn help to cause the water tables to rise.
The reverse is also true.
The less rains fall, the less there are seepages and recharges the water tables fall instead. Here we have come back to last week’s question. But notice; be it whether it is good news or bad news, the causality is the same. So for now, we will continue watching the cycle as if it is positive.
Let’s go back to where we left off the cycle. When the water tables rise, what does that lead to happening next?
Here, imagine the water tables across the region rising through the underground soil. As they do so, we see more moisture in our soils and as they emerge through the surface, we would now have surface water. They could either become a pond or your dam. The more the underground water rises, the bigger the pond. And so is the reverse.
What happens when surface water rises? Just as when water levels drop in our dams, we impose water restrictions. Well, we may say, this time we allow consumption of water … by humans, animals and plants.
When we do not have enough water, notice who we take off the list first? Did you say plants? That’s usually true or we introduce plants that resist droughts. Then we try by as much as possible to share the available water resources between humans and animals.
To continue the thinking, we take it off from where we see plants consume water. Should we leave them out of the story; it will be less than about the whole. So, let us say plants consume water. What happens to the cycle next?
We are now more than half-way around the cycle. Remember we started with rising rainfall levels? And we have now reached partway around the cycle to increased vegetation (see Picture 2).
When the vegetation increases over time alongside with surface water, what do you think will be their impact on rainfall levels in the next cycle?
These will be the subject of discussion in Part IV of this series in next week’s column “Have Greens, Will Rain!” Well, I am sure; you and your friends will enjoy closing the cycle! You may notice different responses along gender or age lines. Try it out and notice.
Would rainfall levels decline? Or could they increase? What do you think?
Thinking ahead, what will be the impact of this causality on economic diversification?
Don’t forget the tips!
Till then have a lovely week discovering and learning!
This is the 3rdof a five part series of this article. Each part will build on the earlier article to an eventual conclusion. We invite you to participate in the column as well as do your ‘own homework’ – searching and discussing the issue to build your own conclusions.
Systems Thinking Research & Leadership Development Institute (STRLDi) 
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