Why Not Both?

A major credit-rating agency is warning Ontario must do more to either control spending or jack up revenues if it hopes to get its budget back to balance.

Fair enough.  You can't reduce a deficit if you keep spending more than you earn.  If you can earn more, though, then revenue starts to close the gap with expenses.

So why not do both?

I may be no economist, but I like to think I know a thing or two about behaviour.  Whatever the bean counters like to think, it's behavioural economics - in another words, sociology - that determines spending habits and realized earnings.

There's a slow creep of behavioural economics and nudge into policy making, taking a look at the why behind spending behaviour, hiring, investment, so on and so forth.

It's a bit of an embarrassing process, really, as it's proving that a lot of people who've spent their careers touting their competency and savvy haven't been as clever as they thought they were.  Management practices, HR, work/innovation incentivization, poverty reduction, everything is coming under the radar of behavioural economics and fields like industrial psychology to determine how we can do the whole lot better.

As data becomes open, we're finding a great deal of avoidable duplication, gaps and overlaps within public services; money going to services that aren't proven to be effective or provided in formats/timeframes not helpful to their target market, usual suspects getting funds that could and should go to more innovative players (along with some in-kind organizational assistance), so on and so forth.

In both the public and private sectors, presenteeism is a real problem that has very little to do with employees, as is generally assumed, so much as it has to do with the nature of work design, hiring, etc. Interns or summer students are brought in to do menial work, instead of harness their modern market insights to assist with redesign of services, marketing, etc.  Marginalized communities are ignored, seen as burdens or threats, when they present a clear opportunity for innovative growth.

We fixate on big wins and the most clearly defined investment potentials and look at money as the only thing we have to offer, when there are so many better options out there.

I've written a bunch of posts on how to do work differently, how to outsource R&D, foster employee engagement/value add/new service and product development, CSR, UGC, etc.  All are ways to innovate more solutions, more new products and services and engage new markets.

They also focus on social good through a realistic, behaviour-oriented frame; how might we get people to serve the public good through the realization of their own interests?

If anyone wants to hear more about these ideas and who's working in the space, they can feel free to browse my blog, if they've got the time, or contact me directly.

I'm sure we can work out a reasonable fee by which I can help you solve society's problems and score some wins along the way.