My first career ambition was to be a doctor, but I settled on trying to become an investigator because I wanted to help people solve problems. I am helping people by sharing the knowledge I have learned over the years and the ideas I have created from it. I am especially grateful for all that I learned about problem-solving, environmental justice, law, justice, ecology, nature, environment, natural resources, and forestry. However, getting back to investigations, the need for most investigations arises from complexity, conflict, controversy, fragmentation, chaos, excess laws, regulations, rules, procedures, and policies. Investigation processes, control, and methods are also reactionary and reductionistic. They occur post facto when it’s too late. In other words, an event must happen first, and then we must determine its causation afterwards. It would be best to prevent problems from occurring in the first place by adopting holistic, adaptive, and preventive systems and practices. I have also noticed that people resort to investigations when they don’t know what to do. Likewise, when you don’t like an individual, you put them under investigation. Politics is notorious for exhibiting such behaviors, especially when a leader pretends to be perfect at all times. Investigations require substantial resources and time to resolve issues. Why not prevent such situations from occurring in the first place, so that investigations are not needed as often? In fact, figuring out the true nature of the problem represents the most significant obstacle to overcome. This can be a daunting task when we live in a complex, multi-dimensional world. Therefore, it is better to prevent the need for investigations in the first place than try to find the true nature of a problem sometimes. Maybe we should solve all the major problems on Earth first. Then the need for reactionary investigations will diminish. Holistic research and exploration in a preventative sense should reduce the need for reactionary measures.
It is evident that our current reliance on investigations, while seemingly a robust mechanism for traditional accountability, often proves to be an inherently retrospective and ultimately inefficient approach. Investigations also have a tremendous amount of prerogative and discretion leading to unintended consequences. These processes, by their very nature, are launched only *after* an undesirable event has occurred, placing us in a perpetually reactive posture. This means we are consistently expending significant resources to diagnose failures and assign causality once damage has already been sustained, rather than proactively safeguarding against such occurrences. It is best to see people in a positive light rather than in the negative light that investigations often portray.
A truly effective and forward-thinking strategy would involve a fundamental paradigm shift towards comprehensive, adaptive, and genuinely preventative systems. Instead of primarily focusing on dissecting what went wrong, we should be investing our collective intellect and resources into cultivating environments and operational frameworks that are designed to anticipate, mitigate, and even absorb potential issues before they escalate into crises. This demands a holistic perspective, integrating risk assessment, continuous improvement, and a culture of proactive learning into every facet of our operations.
Furthermore, it’s worth acknowledging that investigations can, at times, serve as a default response in the absence of clear strategic direction, or, regrettably, become a politically charged instrument. In complex organizational dynamics, particularly where an image of perfection is meticulously maintained by leadership, the investigative process can be subtly diverted from its impartial purpose, becoming a means to address interpersonal discord or deflect broader systemic accountability.
The demands placed on an organization by an extensive investigation are immense – consuming countless hours, diverting critical personnel, and incurring substantial financial costs. These resources could be deployed far more effectively to build resilience, implement early warning systems, and foster an organizational culture that prioritizes foresight over hindsight. By embedding preventive measures and adaptive mechanisms into our core functions, we can significantly reduce the frequency and severity of incidents, thereby reducing the need for time-consuming and costly post-mortem analyses. Let us explore how we can transition from merely reacting to problems to intelligently preventing them, fostering a more stable, efficient, and proactive future. Incidents can also be prevented by adhering to the criteria outlined in the Unidiversity Earth Research Explorers cycle. If we strive to be loving, caring, sharing, giving, forgiving, and genuinely kind, this will foster accountability by cultivating conditions of comfort, joy, love, Hope, unity, equity, faith, and sustainable, striving happiness. This will prevent the need for most investigations if people follow this advice. Striving to live closer to nature, natural spirituality, natural healthy living, and natural humanity causes people to integrate more holistic behaviors, preventing the need for investigations. This naturally creates adaptive stability. Consequently, most future problems can be solved through holistic arbitration rather than reactionary, reductionist investigations. Investigators should become more like research explorers, preventing adverse outcomes in the first place. They can accomplish this by engaging in holistic, prescriptive advice as well.