Moment with the Mayor: Politics is Irrational

Hi Neighbours:

One of my tasks as Mayor is to ensure good governance and decision-making. I happen to think we have a healthy Council respectfully working together to make good decisions. With this type of responsibility, I do lots of reading on topics like decision-making. Here are a couple of observations:

Politics is irrational (I learned this as a young man.) Each of us has aspirations and a worldview that makes perfect sense to us and others like us but, when we meet together weird things seem to happen. Down in the States, some research was completed on decision-making (Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Great Decisions). When individuals were interviewed alone, everyone was accommodating and moderate with a desire to work together with others. However, once people became part of a larger group with similar aspirations and worldviews, things became weird. In this case, people were either Republicans or Democrats. Once inside the group, the moderation people previously demonstrated individually became more extreme to the extent that the two groups were polarized. The result? Irrationality.

There are a couple of mistakes we commit leading up to irrational decisions and actions. First, we are optimistic and expect our tasks to be finished sooner than the actual time. Second (and this one hurts) is that we are egocentric - we often assume that if we like something, or think a certain way, that other people will like it or think like me.

Unfortunately, as a result of these mistakes - assuming the perfect and timely execution of plans and that everyone agrees with me, irrational decisions and actions become larger than they should be. The question is: how do we avoid these mistakes? There are some tools to be used but fundamentally it comes down to creating and maintaining an environment in which everyone has a chance to share the information they have, and their interpretation of the facts. In turn, the rest of the group has to listen and hear the facts and the accompanying interpretation. Council, in our assessment, believes we do this.

How does this get applied to our community? At the end of the day, I think it comes down to grace. We need grace to speak and be heard because when two or more people get together, something irrational is likely to happen. So how do we move forward? With grace knowing that we are all building something together, and that something is Kindersley.

Please write or phone if you would like me to discuss a particular topic. If you have any questions or comments, drop me a line at the town office or email me at mayorenns-wind@kindersley.ca. You can also check out my blog at http://mayorjohn.blogspot.ca/. I appreciate your feedback.