KQED’s Forum: “Guest host Spencer Michels and guests discuss proposals to drain the Hetch Hetchy reservoir and restore the underlying valley.” (MP3 recording)

Reminds me of this quote from H.L. Mencken: “For every complicated problem there’s a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.”

Seth’s Blog: “The easiest way to deal with change and with all the anxieties that go with it is not to deal with it at all. The easiest thing to do is to allow the urgency of the situation to force us to make the decisions (or take the actions) that we’d rather not take. Why? Because then we don’t have to take responsibility for what happens. The situation is at fault, not us. … Smart organizations ignore the urgent. Smart organizations understand that important issues are the ones to deal with. If you focus on the important stuff, the urgent will take care of itself.”

The 8/12/2005 edition of the Newshour with Jim Lehrer featured a story on the effort to have San Francisco remove the O’Shaughnessy Dam that stores water for 2.4 million Bay Area residents (see video/transcript and audio download).

Seth’s Blog: “So what that all scientific data is on one side of an issue? So what if your service is half the price and better? So what if your candidate will govern better or your environmental solution is better than your competitors? … Truth is not marketing (though sometimes marketing with the unvarnished truth is a great story), and humans are far more likely to engage and embrace and believe marketing than they are to believe the truth.”

Something to consider the next time you try to convince your stakeholders that the project you’ve come up with is the right one at the right time in the right place for the right cost…

Seth’s Blog: “There’s no point whatsoever in having a meeting designed to elicit change if the attendees are insulated against changing their minds. … Being right isn’t the point. Being right and being persuasive don’t seem to matter much either. Being right, being persuasive and being with the right person when that person is pre-disposed to change their mind… that’s when things happen.”