- If you are the Chief of Police for Afghanistan, what solution would you develop to pay the cops that are actually working, reduce corruption, and boost their morale.
Our proposed solution would start by erasing the existing payroll database and start anew. To create the new database, we would require a check in at least three times a day. Employees will check in with a designated staff member at each police base/region for verification. They will report their activities and location throughout the day. Based on these check-ins, a person would be added to the database. This in turn should establish a database composed only of the active policemen. The money that was previously being paid to these ghost people can thus be redirected to paying the aforementioned designated staff member, who will continue overseeing the check-ins (reduce corruption) and who will serve as a role which others can seek to work up to (boost morale). It can also be allocated toward yearly bonuses that are directly measured by progress and achievements. It might also be possible to have more community outreach to build the relationship between the policemen and the community they are protecting. This results in less fear and more trust, and thus, more cooperativity during times of duress or high stakes crime.
This approach embodies the tenet of regulation: a process of ensuring intrinsic feedback to bring about desired operation of the system so as to meet the desired goals. Having someone be a supervisor that all must respond to allows for a system with checkpoints and feedback at every level of supervision. With that being said, the tenet of leverage points is also utilized in that these small changes (check-ins) would result in a much more stable and productive police system as people are now individually held accountable for the work they do and must actively strive for progress. In a sense, equifinality is also in play when considering the trust built between policemen and community members. Through more community outreach, such relationships should grow and that newfound trust would allow for a more cooperative, larger communal system of protector and protectee. Thus, working at a greater goal of harmony and cooperation through different means. In the essence of this, multifinality also comes hand in hand as the community should ideally feel safer when they know their policemen are striving for better, are trustworthy, and are not corroborating a corrupt system. Policemen are then putting in more effort and more care in the work that they do so that they may both protect those whom they swore they would protect as well as climb the ladder for higher bonuses or ranking.
- If you are the entrepreneur, what multi-final solution will you develop so that you succeed, your venture succeeds (takes water hyacinth off the lake), and the people living along the lakeshore also walk away happy. Please be specific on how your solution might function and precisely whom you would work with. For example, refrain from including vague stakeholders like entire communities.
The first thing the entrepreneur should do is hold a series of community meetings, or, town halls, to gage the concerns and desires of the community members since they are (or should be) major stakeholders in the business of composting their hyacinth. She should propose a number of possible solutions. She can begin with hiring more of the community members as employees to harvest and process the hyacinth. With more hands on deck, more compost and briquettes could be produced, and thus more money can be made. Since briquettes can be used as low cost heat source for cooking or home heating, and thus mass production is already a bonus in and of itself. If not enough of an incentive, community members could get a small discount for allowing access to their hyacinth. Since compost has many uses, ie. farming, she could also team up with farmers in the area to do a similar thing (use as incentive, introduce discount). In all of this, the fishermen benefit by having the lake cleaned and thus, multiple goals are met (multifinality) for the progress of one greater goal (equifinality): profit for all stakeholders and harmony while doing so. Because all would be working together (community provides employees, employees provide hyacinth profit, profit provides for the entrepreneur as well as the farmers, and families using briquettes, in addition to cleaning the lake for fishermen), the tenet of interdependence surrounding the production and distribution of hyacinth now exists as well. The community is also free from health consequences of hyacinth pollution in the lake, further satisfying the tenet of holism.