Folk Music, Blame and Fundamental Solutions

by Mike Farmer

Real Estate Broker

Author website

A block from my office on one of the squares there’s this guitar player and singer sitting on a bench providing folk music for the passersby. It’s not music I’d actually go out and buy (probably why he’s playing from a bench in the square), but its good in its environment. It’s down to earth, raw, natural and centering. When I’m half bonkers from all the hubbub, I’ll drop by and listen – it helps to get centered.

At the center there’s a clearer, more peaceful world that’s difficult to access among the daily nabob nattering (see Spiro Agnew) and incessant activity. Yesterday, after completing my centering ritual by listening to “Old Mountain Dew”, —

Well they call it that good old mountain dew

And them that refuse it are few

I’ll hush up my mug, if you’ll fill up my jug

With that good old mountain dew

 — back at the office I started thinking about blame while reading some comments regarding the ongoing real estate bog. Blame has little meaning at the center. Some are blaming the media while others blame lenders, foolish buyers making foolish choices, greedy sellers, Greenspan’s years at the helm of the Fed, on and on it goes.

Here’s what Peter Senge writes about blame in his book, The Fifth Discipline:

We tend to blame outside circumstances for our problems. “Someone else” — the competitors, the press, the changing mood of the marketplace, the government — did it to us. Systems thinking shows there is no outside; that you and the cause of your problems are part of a single system. The cure lies in your reationship with your “enemy.”

Senge goes on to talk about putting pieces of the puzzle together to gain an understanding of the whole, how to look for leverage in the midst of fundamental problems in order to create fundamental solutions, rather than get mired in symptomatic problems and tinkering with symptomatic, short-sighted solutions.

Blame tends to lead the mind in wrong directions and use up energy better spent on fundamental solutions. Every day I’m given what is, and I can recognize it and work with it or complain about it and avoid it. Knowing the causes of the RE bog is useful information, but it doesn’t help me deal with how it affects my business if blame is as far as I get.

Joe and Jane Smith, sitting at their breakfast table in Hoboken, NJ, are reading about bankruptcies (symptomatic problem) blaming the situation on the ignorance of home buyers biting off more than they can chew, feeling intellectually and financially superior to the dunces facing foreclosure, yet Jr. Smith, their 15 year old son, has every video game game known to man and has never been taught the value of a dollar or the definitions of “no” or “wait” (fundamental problem).

A big bank is foreclosing left and right or delaying the inevitable with extensions (symptomatic solution) while everyone is blaming and covering their butts and no one is talking about the mental models within the organization that need to change in order to prevent this from happening in the future (fundamental solution).

When I hear people getting too caught up in blaming, it always comes across as defeatism, a cop-out, avoidance or a form of puffery to feel superior. On the other hand, simple “positive thinking” and “will power” as mental gimmicks to create unrealistic expectations seem futile and superficial as well.

So, next time I’m expending unproductive energy complaining that media hacks are “killing my bizness” or bluster up like Norman Vincent Peale on steroids, I’ll go visit the guitar man and get centered where only the daily pursuit of fundmental solutions matters.

For more on fundmental solutions to fundmental problems, send $100 to The Mike Farmer Fundamental Solutions Foundation and get my newsletter, How “Old Mountain Dew” and Other Folk Songs Can Enhance Your Career and Boost The Bottom Line. You also get a free coffee mug and t-shirt.  (just kidding)

Bonzai