The Simple things

Citation

Evans, S. (2013), "The Simple things", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 26 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-06-2013-1379

The Simple things

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 26, Issue 6

Occam’s razor (lex parsimoniae) says that the simplest answer is often the right one. It’s not irrefutable, of course, but even allowing for some looseness in fit, the idea has its attractions. After all, why spend a lot of time exploring every nuance for a perfect explanation when there is one that will suffice almost all of the time? As Bertrand Russell preferred to put it, it is better to deal firstly with what you know before making inferences.

Not all problems are Gordian knots, however, and the allure of simplicity does not mean that the answer is actually in plain sight. Problem solving often involves lots of “what if” moments, each positing a possible solution to a present dilemma, and each requiring some thoughtful investigation. Nonetheless, I do like stories of epiphanies, and ones demonstrating that we often have a long way to go before we can truly say we have mastered the ability to think clearly and quickly.

One such story concerns a man who wanted to modify a road-going motorcycle for a particular class of track racing. He replaced many parts with lighter equivalents and seemingly had it ready but the engine kept seizing and having to be rebuilt. As his budget for further work was shrinking, the owner began seeking someone to blame for this mysterious affliction:

Everybody who got blamed was progressively cleared. Every idea of the cause was immediately the answer until it was proven wrong. Every piece of advice was dismissed before being considered; in turn it was thought up as an original idea then dismissed again. (Shields, 2012).

It sounds a bit like management processes in a modern office, doesn’t it? Anyway, the engine was rebuilt once more, with the sheepish mechanic offering free labour, and all seemed well until the bike was tested on the track. There, the temperature gauge kept on climbing. Back in the pits, the bike was allowed to cool down and the racer plus his collection of friends stared helplessly at the reluctant machine. An old hand at racing who was sharing their shed with them that day walked over and restarted the bike. He looked at it for a moment and then returned to his own racer, but not before commenting that they had wired up the radiator fan backwards. It had been spinning the wrong way all this time, and cooling nothing (Shields, 2012). Simple.

On the other hand, in the 1960 s, British pop-rock band The Who once sang, “The simple things you see are all complicated” (Townsend, 1966). Though they were apparently dealing with specifically deceptive appearances, the phrase does conjure notions of what we sometimes face in personal and work settings. We can underestimate the complex nature of our environment.

For a number of years I taught a university topic entitled Communication Skills for Creative Artists that drew together students in creative writing and screen courses. It covered presentation skills, constructing an argument, persuasive writing, negotiation techniques, group work, and so on, all in a quest to improve their chances of getting to do what they really loved. After all, one day they were likely to have to successfully impress someone who controlled money or other resources as to the quality of their skills or project by pitching an idea or applying for a grant.

What did they think of my topic? It was not high on their list of fun things to do and the pay-off was somewhere in the future, so a few voted with their feet, organising an alternative topic with the program coordinator that was closer to their desires. They felt that getting a foot in the door of their chosen industry could be achieved through networking, mixing with people already working there, rather than what I had to offer.

One could say they had demonstrated some negotiation skills already given that they pulled off this change in their study plan, and it’s true that we should not underestimate networking or work-integrated learning (especially as I teach that too). Nonetheless, it was still interesting to see several of them come back to me a year or two after they graduated, looking for personal guidance on the topic content they had missed. Maybe the simple things they thought they saw were more complicated, after all.

Numerous management advisors suggest that the best way to solve a problem is to step back and try to see the bigger picture, the fundamental factors that are at play, before delving deeper. Typically, these approaches are presented as anecdotes (for example, Carroll, 2012) so that we can visualize the elements of the situation more clearly. At some level, it comes back to telling stories – and that is an enduring aspect of teaching and learning.

In this issue, Abdifatah Ahmed Haji contemplates the demands to publish in high-ranking journals in order to advance one’s career, and the consequently greater likelihood of failing at both. Intriguingly, this poem was triggered by “Publish or Perish” (see AAAJ 25.6), a poem from Barbara L’Huillier, whose latest work also appears in this issue. Her “The Key to Business Success” addresses the seeming failure by management to identify the problem behind a business’s lack of success. Maybe there is a simple solution lurking in both situations.

Your own creative contributions can be submitted via ScholarOne (see below), and your email correspondence is always welcome, of course, at: mailto:steve.evans@flinders.edu.au

Acknowledgements

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ. Author guidelines for contributions to this section of the journal can be found at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=aaaj

Steve Evans

Literary Editor

References

Carroll, N.R. (2012), The Communication Problem Solver: Simple Tools and Techniques for Busy Managers, American Management Association, New York, NY

Shields (2012), “Bikeshop”, Two Wheels, June

Townsend, P. (1966), Substitute [45rpm record], Polydor Records, London