189: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

Welcome once again to UnMind, the podcast of Great Cloud, my Zen name, also published on Substack, and as my DharmaByte in the newsletter of the Silent Thunder Order (STO) - visit www.STOrder.org. Please let me know if there is a subject you would like to hear about in a future segment. We are pioneering a creative, collaborative approach to establishing true Zen community (Skt. sangha) in the USA. We invite you to come aboard the raft. If you are in the Southeast, visit www.aszc.org for our schedule. "Excuse Me My Dear Aunt Sally," in case you are unfamiliar with the expression, is a mnemonic I learned in high school for remembering the proper sequence of arithmetical operations to be performed in solving quadratic equations: solve the exponents first; then do the multiplication; then the division; the addition; and finally, any subtraction called for. If you do not follow this sequence exactly, you will not get the right answer. Setting aside for now the question of what may be the larger point of getting the right answer, as well as the question of the potential arbitrariness of the "givens" of any equation — i.e. the initial values attributed to "x" and "y" — XMDAS provides an analogy for the process of solving any problem, from a design-thinking perspective. Let's look at each of the five steps, one at a time. From writing a book to simplifying our life, it works. Determining what value lies under the radical in an exponent (X) is roughly analogous to defining the reason for pursuing any problem, whether in a professional setting or in everyday life. "What's it all about, Alfie?" or "What's the meaning of this?" as my grandfather would sternly demand, when we were caught roughhousing, in my younger days. He didn't realize what a profoundly central question he was asking. I find myself at the intersection of Zen and design-thinking, when confronting the various aspects of daily life. Zen practice and the discipline of design-science, as one of my many mentors, R. Buckminster Fuller, termed it, are both generalist worldviews oriented to a problem-solving mentality as an approach to navigating the challenges of life in our times and developing the specialist skills necessary to that endeavor. Key to finding the best solution to any problem is developing the best definition of the problem. In the professional context, working for the benefit of a client company, the first step may involve redefining the client's own definition of the problem they are asking you to solve. One of the values of using outside consultants is that they ostensibly are not subject to the same tunnel vision of insiders, though of course they may be hindered by another sort of tunnel vision. The process outlined is meant to mitigate against this. Returning to and redefining the focus of the initiative is a crucial part of the process. It should be noted that someone writes down the ideas on a whiteboard for all to see. The second step, doing the multiplication (M), is likewise analogous to brainstorming, engaging in the uninhibited free association of any and all factors that may have a role in developing the final solution to the given problem. This is where thoroughness and lack of prejudging come into play. Best done as a form of playful "What-if" scenarios. The third, division (D), correlates roughly with sorting the various free-ranging comments into groupings or categories of related items, like the familiar "One of these things is not like the others" theme f