Language and Thinking

There is a circular argument about the manner in which language limits thinking.   The argument that our ability to think is limited by vocabulary is used to suggest that we cannot understand anything we do not have words to describe, but the counterargument is that we have the demonstrated ability to coin terms to describe things for which our vocabulary is insufficient.

It must be acknowledged that we are unable to gain knowledge that cannot be articulated through second hand-experience. That is, if we gain information about something from another person, in speech or in writing, then the other person is only able to communicate knowledge for which he can convey by means of words.  Our ability to receive information depends on his ability to send it, and his ability to send it depends on his skill in communicating.

So it must likely be conceded that we cannot gain second-hand knowledge of anything if our own language skills and those of the source are inadequate to communicating a specific bit of information.   But this does not mean that understanding is limited in a general manner: knowledge proceeds language, and is not derived from it.

First-hand experience defies this limitation because the information we receive is not limited to the verbal channel.   For example, there are sensory experiences that we remember and develop an understanding of, but cannot consider verbally - there are no "words in our mind" while we experience a sensation - and which cannot be adequately described to us by anyone else.   While ineffable, it is a sense-memory impression that becomes for us a part of our mental model of a thing, and in some instances quite an important one.

As an aside, this also addresses the notions about intuition or extrasensory perception.  There is to date no method of describing how these processes work, but it is plain that there are sensations that we have that are ineffable.  So to "sense" something is likely to have knowledge that cannot be articulated.  It is well within the range of sensory perception, but beyond our ability to verbalize.

It is not uncommon to notice that someone is adept at something but cannot explain it.   Ask an old person who is able to routinely select the best produce in the market how she does it, and she is likely to say that she "just knows" from having done it so many times.  That is to say, she possesses knowledge but not the ability to convey it in words.

We have the same experience when, after concentrating intensely upon a problem and failing to find a solution, it seems to "pop" into our minds when we stop trying to think about it.   Our mind is able to make connections that we cannot describe in words, and by leveraging this unspoken and unspeakable knowledge, we are able to derive a solution.   It is not that we were not thinking about it, simply that we ceased limiting our mind to our language.

Another example is the difficulty we have in describing an experience to others sufficiently.  We often find we cannot do so.   Consider how you might describe the flavor of a pear to someone who has never tasted one - it is impossible to do with sufficient accuracy that they would confidently know upon tasting one that it is the same thing you had described.

Language, therefore, is a tool of communicating thought, but not the stuff of which thoughts are made.  A great deal of confusion and misunderstanding comes of failure to make that distinction.

Knowledge and Consumers

I'd like to ruminate a bit about a theory of knowledge acquisition and the way in which this influences consumer behavior - which is to say that this will likely be tedious, but I have the sense that it's worthwhile as I have never seen a brand approach its target market in quite this way, and I expect it may be useful to do so.


Kinds of Knowledge

One way to consider knowledge is by considering the method by which it is gained - whether it is based on experience or inference, and whether it arises from ourselves or from others, resulting in four basic types:

• Experience - Knowledge that is gained from personal experience, in which the data is as accurate as sensory perception and memory, but which may be reinterpreted in arrears
• Witness - Knowledge gained from an experience that does not affect an individual personally, but directly witnesses the experience of another person - which is likewise as accurate as perception and memory and is subject to greater variances in the process of interpretation afterward
• Inference - Knowledge for which there is no directly corresponding personal experience, but which is derived from various memories (of similar experience) and abstract logic.   This knowledge is unproven, but seems plausible given an individual's own reasoning.
• Allegation - Knowledge that a person gains from other people, regardless of whether it is based on real experience or sound reasoning, but which is accepted because it seems plausible and whether they regard the source as reliable.

These four types or knowledge are listed in their order of credibility, though this may be subject to argument - as there are instances in which a person may doubt his own inference, or even his own experience, if he gives sufficient credibility to the allegations of others - however, this should be unusual, to the point that I would be reasonably confident in asserting that any instance in which the order above is compromised represents a logical defect.


How This Ties to Marketing

The connection to marketing is fairly straightforward: the methods by which a person has and accepts knowledge for consumer products is identical to the methods by which a person has and accepts knowledge in general.  The same schema, and the same principles, apply from one to the other.   With this in mind, consider the methods of marketing that correspond to the kinds of knowledge:

• Experience - First-hand experience with a brand is the strongest and most credible source of knowledge about the brand.
• Witness - The knowledge gained from witnessing others use of a brand, while subject to inaccuracies of perception and interpretation.
• Inference - The beliefs that are formed based on comparing the brand to memories and experiences of a similar nature
• Allegation - The information that is received from other sources, and which is taken to be credible based on whether the claims seem plausible and the source seems reliable.

Considered thus, the most popular method of disseminating information about a brand (advertising) is also the weakest and least credible.  And for that matter, word-of-mouth promotion falls into the very same category, and is superior only by virtue of the increased credibility of the source.

Taken together, this would suggest that the approach to marketing which traditionally receives the greatest support in terms of resources and budget is likely the least effective method - and that further consideration should likely be given to the other three categories, attempting to establish as vivid and credible a connection as possible.


Knowledge Versus Belief

An afterthought: I am likely neglecting the distinction between knowledge and belief - but the more I consider it, the less relevant that would seem to be.   "Belief" connotes information that is not known (factually) but merely accepted as true.    But ultimately, belief is not a separate thing from knowledge, but an assessment of the reliability of knowledge: the degree to which we are willing to accept as fact something we suspect to be true.

So whether belief is weak knowledge or knowledge is strong belief, the threshold that is of the greatest interest is the point at which there is sufficient faith in knowledge/belief that an individual is prepared to apply it to a predictive model, and use it as a basis for behavior.

Leading Smart, Creative People

I recently read Clever, buy Goffee and Jones, which speaks to some of the dramatic differences between managing laborers and knowledge-workers.   Their central argument is that the nature of work in the present day has undergone a dramatic change from previous generations, and an equally dramatic change is needed in organizational structures and management practices if we are to leverage the full benefits of the intelligence and creativity of the modern workforce.

Essentially, personnel management from the dawn of civilization (or even the dawn of cooperation in tribal societies) reflected the model of "one mind many hands" - that is, one person decided what was to be done and many people contributed their effort to executing on the leader's ideas, with minimal problem-solving taking place on the front lines of an organization.

One architect designed a pyramid and made all the essential decisions, and legions of drudges carried out his plans, with supervision by a large hierarchy of overseers.  Some decisions might need to have been made when the stones didn't fit together quite right, but these were minor adjustments and workers for the most part toiled away mindlessly to execute on the leader's plan.

But in the modern age, problem-solving and even strategic decision-making is done on the front lines of an organization.   They are still guided by the goal set by a leader, but they are not merely following orders but applying their knowledge and skills to defining the solution.   In such an organization, "one mind many hands" has ceded to "one goal many minds."

It's most obvious in industries that have long relied on the expertise of workers:  a hospital administrator who has a business degree and knows nothing of medicine must manage a staff of surgeons, or a venture capitalist with an idea for a web site but no web development skills must manage a staff of programmers, designers, and other specialized personnel.   In such situation the leader can describe the conditions of success, but cannot instruct them in the work that must be done to achieve it, and must often rely upon their expertise to modify his vision to make it better and more feasible.

While there is still a place for drudge-workers to carry out orders mindlessly and without questioning or modifying the orders they receive, this work is increasingly being sent overseas, and the real value creation is not in the hands-on tasks but in the mental work to determine what tasks ought to be done.   And yet, the knowledge workers are being managed by the same techniques that common laborers are managed - which effectively prevents them from doing what they do best: to think and solve problems.

This is fairly obvious in the way in which companies pay lip-service to being "innovative" or even demand it of their workers, but at the same time fail to create a culture in which innovation is possible, and often cling to old command-and-control models that discourage and punish innovation.    The firms that understand innovation and genuinely desire it understand this, and have made some radical changes.  The firms that do not understand innovation but cover its results merely imitate the innovators in superficial ways, and do not seem to understand where they are going wrong.

My sense is the Goffee and Jones provide at least a partial answer.   In many instances, their focus falters, or they have a great sense of what should be done but not how to do it.   But at the most basic level, they seem to be onto something fundamental that has significant potential that has broad implications for businesses, their employees, and their customers.

Industrial Management Meets the Knowledge Economy

An interesting theory: the reason many long-standing firms struggle to remain competitive in the present day economy is that their paradigm of organizational management remains stuck in the Industrial era.   That seem a bit glib to me, but not entirely inaccurate.

In the industrial era, and likely throughout history up to that point, management was largely spreading the work of one mind to many hands.   This is illustrated in the "pin factory" example of the division of labor - in which each worker was shown a simple and specific task (draw the wire, cut the wire, sharpen the tip, etc.) that he would perform exactly as demonstrated, over and over, to create a standardized product.   He does not need to solve problems or to think, merely to follow procedures and perform to standards, and if any problem arose to call over a foreman, who was the only worker on the floor authorized to make decisions.

Such jobs still exit in the present day, but are becoming far fewer in the domestic (US) economy because the manufacturing tasks of mass-production factories have mostly been shipped overseas.  However, the mental and problem-solving work - deciding what products to make, how to make them, how to market them, etc. - are what remains in most manufacturing organizations.    In that economy, the worker does not follow procedures, but must do knowledge-based tasks that involve problem-solving, which is a completely different kind of work.

In such an environment, there is no standard procedure for accomplishing tasks - there is no standard procedure for discovering the solution to a problem, and if one is defined it is only a rough approximation of what is actually done.   One a solution is discovered and a blueprint is crafted for the work that must be done to effect it, it can be (and often is) handed off to the drudges who perform tasks.   But even "the drudges" do not follow the same pattern, in the way that the laborer who sharpens a pin does the same thing every time, but must apply knowledge and skills to effect an outcome that is described but a process that often is not.

Hence, the problem with older management techniques being used in the modern economy is that they simply were not designed for the kind of work that is done anymore ... yet few seem to realize this or, if they do, to act upon it consistently.   Unfortunately, it seems that many who recognize this have only snake-oil to offer by way of a solution - misty and nebulous suggestion of techniques that seem to work, without a systematic examination of the reasons they do work in some instances (and fail miserably in others).

I'm not really sure where this was going ... or if it's gotten anywhere ... but there it is.

One Hundred Books

I’ve recently completed a goal I set for myself about four years ago: to read one hundred books on topics related to my profession: design and usability, social media, mobile, web analytics, marketing, leadership, project management, strategy, economics, and various other topics.   They’re annotated on my personal web site, as my intention was to study these topics closely rather than read at leisure.

I’ve mixed feelings on the completion of this goal: I read a lot of very good books and a few fairly bad ones, and spent a great deal of time meditating on some of the perspectives I’ve encountered.    In a way, it feels a lot like graduating from an academic program, with a wan sense of pride in the accomplishment but knowing that it’s all been preparation for something I can’t quite conceive.   I waver between the sense of having accomplished something quite significant, and the sense that I have wasted quite a lot of time.

Perhaps that’s just melodrama grown of intellectual exhaustion – it really has been a long slog, and along the way I’ve amassed a reading list of additional topics I’d like to study that were not closely enough related to my primary goal to invest the time.   The more you learn, the more you realize there is still to be learned, and perhaps that’s the reason for the melancholy state in which I find myself at this moment.

At yet, I remain faithful to the pursuit of knowledge – anything you learn, even if it is of no immediate practical use, enriches your intellect and renders you capable of understanding things that leave others dumbfounded.   Thought it is with some sense of irony that the knowledge I have gained leaves me dumbstruck at the complete lack of its evidence in the world, such as it is.

All of this is likely a very odd way of bragging about an accomplishment, yet rather than feeling like I have climbed a hill, I instead feel as if I have climbed to the place I imagined to be the top of a hill only to find myself at the foot of a mountain.   It’s a very strange thing and I’m not sure if I quite like it .

Knowledge and Motivation

I've seen the same basic analysis done in three different topics I often read about (leadership, training, and selling) and am presently struggling to piece it all together, so what lies ahead may be fractured and highly speculative, but here it is ... when influencing human behavior to whatever end, an important consideration is the level of knowledge and motivation the subject brings to the process. If your strategy does not account for these factors, and account for it accurately, it is doomed from the start.

Knowledge

Knowledge pertains to the information a person has about a given subject and the certainty that they feel in that knowledge. There is some disagreement over whether it is important for that knowledge to be valid, though "validity" tends to become subjective beyond the basic observable facts, and it seems reasonable to make some distinction between a person who has a head full of disinformation versus a person who has valid information.

Perhaps this would lead to a different analysis, but for the present, it's neither here nor there. The correctness or incorrectness of knowledge is often highly subjective: one person accepts as true what another dismisses as false. The important thing in this consideration is whether their knowledge, fact or fallacy, is in line with your own knowledge.

A misinformed person is worse, and more dangerous, than a completely uninformed person. The road to hell is paved with good intentions - to which I would add "... good intentions of half-witted and misinformed people." But whether a person is ignorant or misinformed, the task of a person who means to exert influence requires considering the degree to which the subject shares knowledge with the influencer.

On the basis of knowledge alone, exerting influence or introducing new information requires a careful consideration of the knowledge the subject has. Presume that the subject has more knowledge than he does, and you may fail to provide adequate direction to undertake the desired course of action. Presume that the subject has less that he does, and he will be annoyed and offended by your approach, and in a less-than-compliant state of mind.

Motivation

Motivation pertains to the intrinsic desire of a person to undertake an action. In general, it pertains to the way in which he believes that undertaking a given action will serve his personal interests. Even when a person is, or claims to be, acting for the benefit of others, the emotional/esteem reward of being an agent that delivers the benefit to another person is still the personal benefit of the agent himself.

As with knowledge, motivation has its negative side: a person may be highly motivated to refrain from undertaking an action that someone else may wish to influence them to undertake. The suggestion may be undesirable in itself, or given that there are limited resources, the subject may acknowledge the value of the action but feel that their time and money is better spent on other things.

On the basis of motivation alone, gauging the subject's level of enthusiasm is also a critical element of influence. Presume a person to be motivated when they are not, do nothing to motivate them, and they will remain inert. Presume a person to be unmotivated when they are motivated, and the effort you put into motivating them is unnecessary and frustrating, as your attempt to motivate them is actually impeding them from taking immediate action.

High Knowledge, High Motivation (HKHM)

Considering the two factors together: influencing a person who has high knowledge and high motivation is not merely easy - it's altogether unnecessary. Such a person knows what he wants to do and very much wants to do it, and your task as an influencer is moot. The best thing you can do is shut up and step aside and let them do what you were going to attempt to influence them into doing in the first place.

Arguably, you can act as a facilitator: help them to do it or remove any obstacles that may be in their path. However, this can be counterproductive if you are too proactive. A knowledgeable and motivated individual will find their own path and circumvent obstacles to their goal, and if any well-meaning action you undertake to facilitate ends up creating an impediment, you're doing more harm than good to their cause and your own.

High Knowledge, Low Motivation (HKLM)

By contrast, the subject with a high level of knowledge and low motivation is likely the hardest person to lead, teach, or sell. They feel, right or wrong, that they are very well aware of the potential benefits of taking an action, but do not believe the benefits to be worth the cost and effort of undertaking it. And as such, they remain stubbornly resolved to refuse.

The approach to dealing with HKLM subjects generally assaults their knowledge: convince them that they are wrong and what they know is false, replacing their invalid knowledge with valid knowledge, and it is presumed they will then find the motivation to undertake the desired action (now that it is, indeed, desirable). This is a difficult proposition, as many people are very guarded of their beliefs and any suggestion they may be incorrect will be met with resistance.

However, this approach is based on the premise that the subject's knowledge is, in fact, wrong. Perhaps an important question to ask, even before considering the task of changing their perception, is whether your own perception (or the one you wish to instill in them) is correct. There are many instances where a given product is legitimately of no value to a given customer and it would be unethical to attempt to convince them otherwise.

Perhaps the best approach, in this instance, is not to approach them at all - to be watchful for a time at which their attitude changes or, gently and in small doses, wean them away from the contrarian point of view.   Even so, it may in some instances be impossible (or at the very least, have an abysmal ROI) to do so.

Low Knowledge, Low Motivation (LKLM)

At the opposite end of both spectrums, the subject who has low knowledge and low motivation requires a great deal of effort to influence. This is a common quandary for salesmen of unwanted products, but it's actually a great deal easier to address than the previous category because it deals with awareness.

That is to say that the subject is not resistant to a proposition because he (feels that he) knows it to be undesirable as would the HKLM subject, merely that he does not know why it should be desirable. If given the knowledge, he may recognize the value and his motivation will be kindled.

This is not an instantaneous solution because the tactic works only one of the vectors, and placing too much emphasis on knowledge can shift this individual into the HKLM category, which is simply dreadful. The knowledge that is imparted cannot be information for information's sake, but tied to a purpose, the benefit to the personal interest of the subject.

This seems to be the approach that most personal selling takes: it is assumed that a person will be amenable to buying a product if you provide information and connect it to personal interests. Both are necessary to gaining compliance, but chances are that one or the other may not be necessary to a given customer who is already knowledgeable or motivated.

Low Knowledge, High Motivation (LKHM)

The LKHM subject seems a paradox - how would a person have a high level of motivation to undertake an action that he does not understand? However, it's quite common. Consider the behavior of most teenagers and young adults, who are strongly motivated towards things they do not understand (sexuality being the most obvious example). Consider the behavior of an adult who has only a vague notion of what to do about a need he does not understand (medical care or insurance). It's not as rare as it might seem.

Unlike the HKHM subject, the LKHM cannot be left alone to act on his own because he does not know what to do. He is in a state in which assistance is necessary and very much appreciated, and it is this kind of person who will be eagerly malleable by a leader, teacher, or salesman who offers assistance in discovering a solution he does not understand to a problem he is keenly aware of.

Success in motivation to the immediate action is unnecessary - this individual is already highly motivated - but should not be done with reckless abandon because of after-action remorse. If you consider immediate success only, it's simple to con the LKHM subject into doing whatever you suggest - but if you are seeking to have an ongoing relationship with them, you must cautiously refrain from encouraging them to do things that will be more harmful than helpful in the long run: the subject will eventually reflect on the encounter, and will be filled with hostility and resentment to an influencer who took advantage.

Caveat

Finally, a caveat: I'm not sure if this schematization is quite right. In mulling over the four categories, there is a lot of interplay between knowledge and motivation, and it occurs to me that knowledge might be seen as a component of motivation rather than a separate factor. It could be that the terms are not as well defined as they ought to be, or a closer analysis of the phenomena could reveal that they are entirely correlated. However, it seems for the present to be sensible.

Mobile Sales Support

Jotting down some thoughts on a discussion about the use of mobile as a resource to be used by live salespeople ... my sense is it's not terribly good for that purpose, and can even be counterproductive.

The idea is a that a company can shorten sales training by providing each salesman with access to information about merchandise on a mobile device, so that he can access it while interacting with customers rather than having to commit it to organic memory. On the surface, this seems entirely rational and plausible, but I see a few problems:

Primarily, if being able to reference product information on a device was sufficient, there would be no reason to have a live salesperson. Instead, the firm could simply give the customer direct access to the same information resource (at a kiosk, or a mobile device of their own) and let them browse it for themselves - they don't need a salesman to run the search for them and read what he sees on a screen.

This is the common practice for electronic commerce, and its greatest weakness: it places on the customer the burden of finding product information for himself, which presumes that the customer has sufficient knowledge of the product line to conduct a search that will lead him to the right product. For a customer who is already familiar with the inventory, and has a relatively good idea of what he needs, an online catalog is entirely sufficient. It's especially good for routine reordering of products with which the customer is already familiar.

The value of a salesman, however, is in making recommendations of products that a customer is not already aware of. This may occur when the customer is buying a given item for the first time, and it may be valuable to up-sell the customer on reordering by suggesting they try a better product "this time." In that way, it may even help to retain the business of a customer who wasn't satisfied with the item they purchased previously. But this seems like a digression.

The novice salesman is faced with the same problem as the utterly clueless customer - he has no knowledge of the product line. He is further handicapped because he also does not have knowledge of the customer's needs - which puts him in the unenviable position of identify a good match between two unfamiliar bodies of information (product inventory and needs).

Giving such a person a mobile device loaded with product information merely makes him a wetware proxy to a search engine, which contributes little value and instead makes the process all the more difficult. Especially given that American culture values self-reliance and independence, his position is one of an unnecessary person that is making it more difficult for the customer to get what he wants.

The value of a salesman is his familiarity with products, and the ability to identify a selection that best meets the needs of the customer. The discussion leading up to the sale is one of discovery - the salesman knows his products, but must learn his customer's needs. In this way, it is matching a known factor to an unknown factor - which requires much less effort and has a higher probability of success than situations in which both are unknown.

But more to the point, matching known to unknown requires something to be "known" - in this case, the product line, which must be committed to human memory for it to be known at all (data accessible on a device is just information, not knowledge).

With a product inventory in memory, the salesman will be able to make a product recommendation quickly, revise it when the customer provides additional details, explain the reason for his recommendation, and remain constantly engaged in the conversation with the customer.

By contrast, a salesman who lacks product knowledge must gather information, then take his attention away from the customer to search for products, then repeat the search if the customer provides more information, and would have little ability to explain the reason a given product was recommended.

The situation would be damaging, if not devastating, to the customer experience. The customer would have only intermittent communication, and would have to wait periodically while the salesman interacted with his mobile device - which brings both the frustration of "down time" in the process, and the psychological effect of being repeatedly ignored. He would also have the sense that the salesman was not very competent, having to rely on his device to provide information and being unable to offer any rationale for recommending an item aside of stating that the system returned it it as a match.

All in all, I don't see such a mobile application as being much different than having a salesman carry around a binder of product information and constantly refer to it during a sales encounter - this has been possible for years, but I'm not aware of any instance in which it is a common practice.

And in that sense, there may be some utility in using a mobile device to contain product data - but in the same way that a binder of product information: as a training aid for salesmen to help them learn the product line, and perhaps as a reference the salesman could use if he was unable to answer a question. I think that a customer would tolerate a salesman who could answer most of their questions from his own memory, but would periodically need to check a reference to be sure of his facts.

But in terms of the suggested practice - to cut short sales training and make salesmen entirely reliant on product information stored (or accessed) on a mobile device - it seems fairly clear that this is unlikely to be a successful practice.

A Convention of Imbeciles

I may have noted before that the social tools of Web 2.0 do not represent new capabilities, but merely provide an easier way to do things that have been possible all along (for example, it was possible, albeit more difficult, to create and maintain a personal Web site before blogging came along), but what has been the result of that?

I read a blog entry that left me with mixed feelings about the more serious issue facing the Web: that the abundance of content that has arisen from Web 2.0 is not necessarily better, just more, and the effect has been more detrimental than beneficial.

The author's thrust was that an "average" person with a blog is like an idiot with a bullhorn, who can now say idiotic things very loudly, as if the volume of his message makes it somehow less idiotic. And moreover, that the emergence of social media has given a bullhorn to every idiot, transforming the Internet into a cacophony of dunces, all attempting to out-shout one another - and in the process, the information that comes from reliable sources is drowned out.

I can't entirely disagree with that. While I don't accept the opinion that the average person is an idiot at all times, I have to concede that even intelligent people can be idiotic at times (present company included), especially when they choose to act in an asinine manner to call attention to themselves, or have an overpowering urge to express (or repeat) an opinion without having much knowledge or understanding of it.

I would also maintain that, in spite of the ocean of uninformed babble, the emergence of social media technology has also drawn out a lot of expertise from individuals who are both thoughtful and well-informed, but who thus far have been unable to leverage the Internet because they lacked technical sophistication.

The author's argument in that regard was that the necessity of technical knowledge - at the very least, to be able to compose and upload a Web page - was a kind of idiot filter. If you could not figure out how to perform those simple tasks, then you're probably not a very intelligent person anyway, and it's just as well that the world will never hear from you.

And again, I can't completely disagree with that notion, but would counter technical expertise has very little to do with subject-matter expertise for a vast majority of topics. A physicist who does not know how to develop a Web page is still an expert in physics, even moreso than the person who does know how to develop a web page and knows nothing about the subject at all.

Seen that way, the early Internet prior to social media was no less a cacophony of dunces: there were fewer of them, but those who were speaking did not have any special qualification to discuss the topics at hand, any more than the masses of people who can now communicate due to the ease of use.

The conclusion I'm aiming toward (in the usual wending way) is that knowledge of how to create a Web site is a lot like the knowledge of how to type a letter - it's a clerical task. What distinguishes idiot from expert is not knowing how to use a typewriter or how to compose and upload a Web page, but the knowledge of the subject being discussed.

And while I'll concede that social media has handed out bullhorns to idiots, it has also handed them to very knowledgeable people as well, who have contributed valuable information to the Internet.

What's lacking now is the ability to sort and filter through the din. You can't stop the idiots from shouting, but you can choose which sources you listen to and reply upon. This problem is also nothing new, and I hope an expect that within the next decade, a solution will be found.