We had a team building exercise based off of improv comedy, which made an odd sort of sense because the attitudes it takes to do great improv are some of the same skills it takes to do great - and creative - brainstorming and team building.
One of the rules that stuck with me was 'Yes, and...' The idea being that you don't try to challenge or dismiss someone's ideas, but build off of them.
Which is useful when it comes to brainstorming, as you shouldn't start off trying to poke holes in the ideas. Yes, the ideas probably will have some sort of problem. You can address that as you flesh out the plan. It's more important to throw the ideas out there and get people sparking off of each other... you can refine them later.
So, as just an example, I wanted to throw out some oddball ideas for socioeconomic systems. I mean, I keep saying there are more options than just 'capitalism' and 'communism' right?
This is a big, blank board where you can throw all sorts of ideas out, addressing any part of it. How people make money, manage property, etc.
Right now, though, I wanted to play around a bit with stocks and finance. That is, you would seriously need to get an expert when it comes to refining here, but there's a LOT of possibilities.
Consider, if you will, that rich people are generally supposed to be able to live off the interest of their principle. (That's my understanding, at least. Never spend your principle. Invest and live off the proceeds. It'd be fun to try it myself if I had a large enough principle to begin with, but ah... well.)
Anyways... why can't that work in other ways? We've got social security for retirement, and a lot of the libertarian sorts who are trying to do away with that. Companies that have gotten rid of pensions and want us to use 401Ks...
So imagine, if you will, that everyone born has a fund started with a set amount... and it has 18 years to mature. Upon reaching the age of majority, everyone gains control of their fund. They can let it wait (if the stock market is particularly bad, for example), or cash out, or transfer into some other investment opportunity. They can use to to fund college, or buy a house...
The point of the idea isn't to say we 'should' do it, as we'd have to consider where the money comes from, whether it would be national or state or locally funded, and how much is appropriate to start the fund off with. The point is really this - it takes a lot of resources for people to be successful in life, and 'winning' doesn't mean much of anything when too few people have the chance to even compete. If you want to believe in the American Dream, believe we're a meritocracy, it would help if we didn't have such huge disparities in resources. If everyone has a fund that they can use (or blow), then you've got a better case for saying people 'deserve' to be where they are. I'm not saying you've made the case, mind you, but it would have fewer of the problems that people keep glossing over in our current system.
So what if everyone had a starting fund? The rich would still have a ton of advantages, but at least the less well-off would have a real chance to change their circumstances.
By the same token - 401Ks give employees a stake in their company (well, okay. 401Ks don't have to be stock in the company you work for, but many do offer good deals on that. Like matching stock purchases). The company does well, and their retirement fund looks better.
That's got some interesting points from the 'we're all stakeholders in the business, and we all want it to succeed' perspective, but it doesn't exactly give the average employee any sense of ownership in their company.
Or rather, they might see some benefit when it comes to retirement, but in my experience a) none of them have any real ownership or say in company decisions, b) when you do get asked to vote on some sort of proposal, most have no real idea of what the question is, what the stakes or, or what the right answer is and c) it's hard to feel like the work you do really has an impact on it. Especially in a large organization, where one group might do particularly well and another particularly bad. Is the stock price reflecting the sales team? Or the supply chain? Or the engineers? How does a picker in a warehouse feel like their efforts matter, when they work their butts off but one of the other departments doesn't meet their goal and the bonus is less than it would have been if everyone had been on target?
It also seems to me that stock prices are more about gambling and perception than an honest evaluation of expected earnings... but again, that's my non-expert opinion.
What if we did focus on those earnings more? Or rather, what if the quarterly earnings off of a stock were apportioned in such a way that the return was equivalent to what a salary would be. That the price was less about speculation, and more about the fact that one stock returned $2.00 in the first quarter... and could be expected to do likewise for the foreseeable future, and so a low-wage employee might need to own about 3K stocks in order to make a living off that quarterly profit.
What differences would that make in how a company organized itself? What would be the pros and cons of such a system? It'd prob mean a ridiculous amount of stocks would have to be allocated to employees, but there'd also be more of a sense of ownership and 'my company's success leads to my success'. Would it cause more problems in terms of uncertainty? Or improve some of the disconnect between people who are 'just there to earn their wages' and the ones truly trying to make the company succeed? Would it be easier or worse to get rid of salaries and hourly rates?
Idk, I'm just throwing out oddball ideas, but it doesn't work as well without someone to bounce them across.
One of the rules that stuck with me was 'Yes, and...' The idea being that you don't try to challenge or dismiss someone's ideas, but build off of them.
Which is useful when it comes to brainstorming, as you shouldn't start off trying to poke holes in the ideas. Yes, the ideas probably will have some sort of problem. You can address that as you flesh out the plan. It's more important to throw the ideas out there and get people sparking off of each other... you can refine them later.
So, as just an example, I wanted to throw out some oddball ideas for socioeconomic systems. I mean, I keep saying there are more options than just 'capitalism' and 'communism' right?
This is a big, blank board where you can throw all sorts of ideas out, addressing any part of it. How people make money, manage property, etc.
Right now, though, I wanted to play around a bit with stocks and finance. That is, you would seriously need to get an expert when it comes to refining here, but there's a LOT of possibilities.
Consider, if you will, that rich people are generally supposed to be able to live off the interest of their principle. (That's my understanding, at least. Never spend your principle. Invest and live off the proceeds. It'd be fun to try it myself if I had a large enough principle to begin with, but ah... well.)
Anyways... why can't that work in other ways? We've got social security for retirement, and a lot of the libertarian sorts who are trying to do away with that. Companies that have gotten rid of pensions and want us to use 401Ks...
So imagine, if you will, that everyone born has a fund started with a set amount... and it has 18 years to mature. Upon reaching the age of majority, everyone gains control of their fund. They can let it wait (if the stock market is particularly bad, for example), or cash out, or transfer into some other investment opportunity. They can use to to fund college, or buy a house...
The point of the idea isn't to say we 'should' do it, as we'd have to consider where the money comes from, whether it would be national or state or locally funded, and how much is appropriate to start the fund off with. The point is really this - it takes a lot of resources for people to be successful in life, and 'winning' doesn't mean much of anything when too few people have the chance to even compete. If you want to believe in the American Dream, believe we're a meritocracy, it would help if we didn't have such huge disparities in resources. If everyone has a fund that they can use (or blow), then you've got a better case for saying people 'deserve' to be where they are. I'm not saying you've made the case, mind you, but it would have fewer of the problems that people keep glossing over in our current system.
So what if everyone had a starting fund? The rich would still have a ton of advantages, but at least the less well-off would have a real chance to change their circumstances.
By the same token - 401Ks give employees a stake in their company (well, okay. 401Ks don't have to be stock in the company you work for, but many do offer good deals on that. Like matching stock purchases). The company does well, and their retirement fund looks better.
That's got some interesting points from the 'we're all stakeholders in the business, and we all want it to succeed' perspective, but it doesn't exactly give the average employee any sense of ownership in their company.
Or rather, they might see some benefit when it comes to retirement, but in my experience a) none of them have any real ownership or say in company decisions, b) when you do get asked to vote on some sort of proposal, most have no real idea of what the question is, what the stakes or, or what the right answer is and c) it's hard to feel like the work you do really has an impact on it. Especially in a large organization, where one group might do particularly well and another particularly bad. Is the stock price reflecting the sales team? Or the supply chain? Or the engineers? How does a picker in a warehouse feel like their efforts matter, when they work their butts off but one of the other departments doesn't meet their goal and the bonus is less than it would have been if everyone had been on target?
It also seems to me that stock prices are more about gambling and perception than an honest evaluation of expected earnings... but again, that's my non-expert opinion.
What if we did focus on those earnings more? Or rather, what if the quarterly earnings off of a stock were apportioned in such a way that the return was equivalent to what a salary would be. That the price was less about speculation, and more about the fact that one stock returned $2.00 in the first quarter... and could be expected to do likewise for the foreseeable future, and so a low-wage employee might need to own about 3K stocks in order to make a living off that quarterly profit.
What differences would that make in how a company organized itself? What would be the pros and cons of such a system? It'd prob mean a ridiculous amount of stocks would have to be allocated to employees, but there'd also be more of a sense of ownership and 'my company's success leads to my success'. Would it cause more problems in terms of uncertainty? Or improve some of the disconnect between people who are 'just there to earn their wages' and the ones truly trying to make the company succeed? Would it be easier or worse to get rid of salaries and hourly rates?
Idk, I'm just throwing out oddball ideas, but it doesn't work as well without someone to bounce them across.
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