Three Lessons from The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo

This is easily the best book I have read all year, thought-provoking and entirely underrated. Joshua Cooper Ramo’s The Age of the Unthinkable is geared towards international relations, but its lessons can easily be adapted to modern life as a whole. He suggests a revolutionary new way of thinking that is both challenging and effective.

People are looking for a straightforward, linear way to define and solve problems. While this approach may have worked in the past, it is no longer effective. Broad solutions to big problems really are not the answer. Things have become an order of magnitude more complicated in recent years and we need a new, creative mind-set to adapt and survive. This mindset must be radical, revolutionary and ready to toss out any assumptions.

Cooper’s research covers a wide range: from tried and true scientific theories to the information technology and organizational structure of terrorist groups like Hizb’allah.

“…the main problem of this book, which is about how we can best navigate an increasingly complex international order…”

In addition to the sand pile effect I have mentioned earlier, here are three suggestions that really struck me.

Slow Variable Policies

Ramo attributes the success of Hiz’ballah not only to their continued focus on being able to evolve, but to unglamorous, long-term initiatives like ingratiating themselves with the people:

“Why was it when people in southern Lebanon had a problem with plumbing or noisy neighbors or a child who wasn’t interested in the Koran, their first call was to Hiz’ballah?

The answer was that by living in places where Lebanese Shia most needed help and support, Hiz’ballah had become inseparable from daily life — and deeply connected to the slow variables of Lebanon. They drew no distinction between plumbing and making bombs; often the same fighters did both jobs. They had gone deep, and this gave them everything from information to gratitude to quiet spaces where they could engineer their latest terror gadgets or bounce back from Israeli poundings.”

Many books in this genre emphasize flexibility and keep the focus on being able to quickly adapt to change. Cooper does not disagree; he simply adds that there are some low-hanging fruit we need to remember as well.

The “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency strategy of David Kilcullen and David Petreaus that was credited for the success of the surge in Iraq is a perfect example of this in action.

Closer to home, it serves as a great reminder to take good care of our staff and remain focused on good customer service.

Augment our instinct for direct action with a new sense of the incredible power of an indirect approach

The indirect approach is a method of seeing the problem from a different, broader perspective. Bring yourself a bit above the immediate focus of a project to see where it  – and it’s completion – fits in to the larger scheme of what you and your superiors are trying to accomplish. Ramo asks us to see our goals not as the end result, but a part of the larger system. He acknowledges that it is a more complex way to look at things and warns that the different effects you will find are not always what you will have hoped for…

“But the benefits of such an approach is that it forces you to touch as many parts of the system as you can, constantly hunting for signs of unexpected and dangerous echoes bouncing back at you. And in a fast-changing system…that’s a huge advantage.”

So we might not always like what we get, but this more comprehensive approach allows us to spot trouble earlier, and to connect many important dots.

The Revolutionary Spread of Power

At some point, we have all been in a situation where someone else would not give up their control to let someone more capable handle a problem. Usually, we notice this because we think we can better handle the problem than they can.

Maybe so, but it is that same mindset that likely causes us to do the exact same thing to someone else.What Mr. Ramo proposes is to change our focus from what we can control to where we can encourage the growth so often encouraged with the “crowd-sourcing” idea that has begun to really gain acceptance.

“We can’t control the sort of growth we need to foster, can’t dictate what it will look like or force it into existing models.”

This shift will not be easy to accept, maybe an easier way to justify it to ourselves would be to remain focused on the outcome and look at this as a way to free ourselves up for more important tasks. A little vain, but whatever works!

Conclusion

Look at how your current issues fit into the bigger picture. Be ready for unexpected results. Accept that you won’t always like what you get, but with the resilience you have built up by doing the little things, the relationship building, team building, delegation and due diligence you will be better able to absorb new challenges.

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