Policy and Operational Decisions

Yes, it was only a matter of time before I started to use analogies relating to the stuff that I'm learning at university. It's a habit that I've developed and I'm not surprised that its managed to worm its way into my blog - for better or worse, I'm yet to see. I don't actually think that this can be a bad thing however as it makes me feel like I'm challenging myself intellectually and that never hurts anyone. As the title of this post suggests, I am going to talk about the decisions that we all make and the effect that they have on us. Firstly I should probably just provide a little bit of background as to where this analogy comes from before I just fire into metaphors and the like. In public authorities you have what are called policy decisions and other things that are called operational decisions. The policy ones are the high level decisions that are made which affect everything, meaning that they have a long term and wide effect on things. Operational decisions on the other hand are the ones that are made 'on the ground' and apply only to the situation in hand and the best way to deal with that situation. The analogy I'm going to draw from this is that the decisions we make in life fall very much under these 2 categories. Firstly you make huge choices that affect your future and then you make those day-to-day choices that only really apply to that day or at the very most, your short-term future. Let me explain further...

Each of us are 2 different people: the first person is the one that lives out every day life and the second is the person that judges what the first is doing. In general we don't think about what we are doing. I call it 'going through the motions' but others won't even have a word for it other than 'living' which in many ways is a crude term but it is what we all do. The person that carries out this most simple (yet most important) function is the first person that I mentioned above. The second person (and I would say that it's my second person that is writing this just now) is the one that philosophises and criticises everything you and other people do. Now to link this in with my analogy, the first person is Mr/Ms Operational and the second is Mr/Ms Policy. If we were to lend more time to being the second person then things would go downhill fast. We need someone to execute all of the policies that we are making up in our head and that person needs to be able to play around with them a little bit - Mr/Ms Operational is who we really are then.

I'm a great one for sitting down and having a word with myself. Not literally because talking to one's self is a sign of madness, but I'll tell myself (in my head) what's going wrong and what's going right in my life. However, if I was to live out my life doing this all of the time then I wouldn't get anything done. You can see from the number of great philosophers that there have been over the years who have dedicated their lives to thinking (or being 'policy people') that there is so much to think about. Yes, it's a fascinating thing when it catches your imagination but even the likes of Plato had to do everyday stuff like eat and sleep - we make operational (or subconscious) decisions all the time no matter how philosophical we think we are. I may well enjoy thinking but at the same time I enjoy just doing things that only matter on a day-to-day basis that, in the grand scheme of things, have very few consequences.

What the future holds we don't know. The thing we do know however is what decisions will affect our futures - university choices, moving house etc. Things like what you are doing at the weekend are less important and therefore don't require much in the way of thinking. If you end up having a bad night out then so be it - why ponder it? Even something seemingly as big as having a girlfriend/boyfriend is something I would class as being operational. Unless you are going to commit yourself to marriage then you really aren't going to change your future to such an extent that you wish you hadn't gone out with someone. If you end up having a bad break-up then again I say 'so be it'. There is nothing you can do about it once it's done so you deal with it just like anything else in the past and move on. I'm not saying that you shouldn't learn from you past but if we spend too much time looking back and getting worked up about how you are feeling on one day of your life then Mr Policy never gets a look in and your future, by extension, suffers. Something that I always enjoy thinking about is that we are making history every second that goes past. Everything we do becomes a part of our past almost as soon as we do it. but you never think about it like that. We make those operational decisions every single second of our lives - we really are making our own history (and actively as well). Even the decision to sit down and think about your future (i.e. making policies in this elaborate analogy) is an operational one and so there is a fine line between the two - I love fine lines.

I'm genuinely scared to proof read this post now in case it looks as confusing as I think it does. The worrying thing is that, if I'm confused by my own analogies, then where does that leave you? I hope you understand it and see where I'm coming from because it really means something. The next time you find yourself having an argument about something someone said/did or you are just feeling sorry for yourself then you should stop. You will gain nothing from it and the consequences of it will be so small that in a weeks time, provided you've put it behind you, the matter will be completely forgotten. We live and learn but we also live to learn - give your own and other people's operational side a chance and chill out.

Thanks for bearing with me on this one,

Martin