Solutions that Do Not Work

A recent article by an economist on a particular problem have wider application. I would like to highlight a couple of proposed solutions that she says will not work because they have wider applicability than the particular problem she is discussing.

The first of these is denial:

For those of us who are not Jedi warriors, refusing to admit it when something has gone wrong usually makes the problem worse, not better. Once people understand that you’re willing to lie to them about how well things are going, you lose a lot of the support that you’ll need to fix the mess you’ve made.

The second of these she terms blamestorming. This neologism has a particular meaning:

it describes the tendency of an organization in which things have gone wrong to waste a lot of time looking for a scapegoat rather than, say, fixing the problem.