Now The Real Test Begins

SEE HERE Now that the election polling places are once more dark and the Congress has been reshaped to correct the egregious excesses of the Obama administration's first two years it's time for the real test. "Follow Through" — What Is This New Congress Going to Actually Do? The deficit didn't get built overnight and most of the government spending is in the form of mandates so you can't just "cut the budget" because there's no reasonable place to cut more than a token ... so you actually have to 1) grow the economy, and 2) change the philosophy of government so that the result at a future time will be shrinking deficits and long term stability. This is a move that was called "adaptivizing" by a management book I've always treasured (Ackoff). FOR A PRESENTATION

I'll have to find it. In the book three kinds of management we distinguished: 1) Satisficing which was the least you can do to meet the requirements, 2) Optimizing which led to the peak performance but tended to be hard to do and expensive, and 3) Adaptivizing which was when you set the system up in such a way that it is self-correcting and seeks constant improvement. Later people starting talking about "The Learning Organization" and that's a kind of adaptivizing move. What we need today in Washington is more adaptivizing thought and less satisficing and forget about optimizing, that just doesn't happen. That's always the excuse for more spending but the alleged goal is never reached. The problem now for Republicans and Conservatives is to Deliver on the Promises and that requires adaptivizing thinking.