D.Jargalsaikhan: First, learn to think in order

He is one who has worked in the public and private sectors. In 2005, he first started his business which lead to many problems in his life. D.Jargalsaikhan mentioned how trying to decide everything, he has won some and lost some, but in the end, he realized that all the problems that people face are only in their heads. In doing so, he started studying about thinking in order. In 2013, he started the Tus Solution LLC and as the director, he operates in management and consulting using systematic thinking.

-Businesses and entities probably contact you when they are not able to solve problems that they are facing themselves. When such a case occurs where does your operation on the company start?

-Starting from discussing with the people who made the rules, we check the core concepts used when making the rules of the company. What this tells us all is the organization of their mentality. How were their goals determined? Does everyone in the organization have the same vision? Is there appropriate distribution of adequate information for the employees to do their jobs? Are the employees doing their jobs? If not, are there consequence measures for them? As such, making the analysis of this is very complicated. However, only after doing all these, the final analysis will be made.

-You stated that it is important to make out whether everyone in the company is working towards a common goal. How do you decipher and improve that?

-I would have to say a lot of things to explain this. So, let’s just take the most simple explanation to answer this. Why do you think family conflicts arise? There is one idea and module of love in the mind of the wife. There is another one in the husband’s mind. In this sense, the woman loves the husband in her way and respectively, the husband does the same. Due to how their perceptions of love are different, arguments would take place. The best way to solve this is for them to both look each other face to face and make their perception of love one. Similar to this, conflicts arise at work. The understanding of work among the employees are all different. Therefore, the organization needs to make everyone’s understanding the same. In reality it is not something that you need an external organization to do. Internally, they are all able to do this.

-Companies that give management advice to organizations need have high functionality themselves. As the director, what requirements do you have for your employees, and how do you further develop and teach them?

-The requirements for everyone must be the same. If they start sorting the bosses and employees, then this would no longer be a business. Doing work is a discovery and learning process in itself. Learning in the ways of discovery and its methods are important, so we make our new employees go through training. We teach them how to identify when they have problems and then the reason why they are in this situation and finally, how they can solve this problem. These skills that we are trying to learn in the 21st century were already mastered by our ancestors in the 13th century and for that reason, they were able to conquer half the world. The secret to this is mentality, organization and discipline. This is what I think.

-How do you teach your employees in the discovery mentality in a short amount of time?

-As opposed to trying to teach your employees, the fact that you are making them do their job is their greatest training. Making them do their jobs in an organized manner with discipline in itself means that you are preparing them for the workplace. Furthermore, there is a way in which the employees with more experience advise the new ones and in this way, they learn from each other. The main way where my work is conducted has become discussions. During these discussions vast amounts of discoveries are being made. Additionally, we identify every conflict that took place at the work. When did this conflict arise? Who caused this? These questions are not important at all. The main one is “Why was this caused?”

 -To what extent do you think the new employees acquired the necessary skills?

-If you assume that you need 100 percent of skills to work in the business sector, then the education sector is providing only 20-25 percent of these.

-What do you think are some skills that new employees are lacking?

-They need to learn to organize their mentalities and learn to see the bigger picture. Included in these are logical thinking, research and teamworking skills. They are lacking the ability to dissect complicated issues to solve them. As mentioned earlier, the new employees in the work force are lacking these skills. There are studies released by the World Economic Forum every year. Generally in life, these skills are missing.

 -In the training modules you have created, have you used your own company as an experimental hamster for this?

-People who want buildings first make the The main way where my work is conducted has become discussions. During these discussions vast amounts of discoveries are being made blueprint of it. This basically means you are putting your mind map on paper where you decide what kind of a building it is going to be with what kinds of doors and houses. In accordance to this module, you make your house. Let’s say you are trying to make an organization with ten people. Can you draw your organization like you are making a blueprint of your house? If you are defining the departments and the people’s roles, this means that you are making a blueprint of your work. There are a lot of things to clarify such as where the foundation, the windows and doors of your organization are. Following the elections, politicians make a new government structure in many different ways. That is not a blueprint, but only an outline. By making the methodology of the system, we help organizations to make these into images. Using this, our organization made amendments to the Constitution.

-You mentioned about how using this theory, you have made the first amendments to the State Constitution of Mongolia and how you need to compare things to come up with the right decision. Regardless of whether you went the right way or the wrong way, there is no other Mongolia. Therefore which country is most suitable for us to compare our country to?

-Comparing it to others while you are doing something is a definite circumstance for human thinking. The process of humans comparing essentially divides to three categories. One is comparing yourself to the past. Another one is comparing yourself to those around you and the third is comparing yourself to your goal. When we can’t find how to compare ourselves to our goals, we start comparing ourselves to the past and those around us. In doing so, we are no longer able to determine our goals. People are supposed to reach out to their goal and people are not supposed to copy others. Often times, people say that Mongolia is a small country. Why must Mongolia copy Singapore, America, or Finland? Mongolia stands out with their history, heritage, geography and climate. Following this, the mindsets of the people are also developed differently. For this reason, Mongolians need to determine their goals themselves. We are lazy, so we keep looking for a readily available decision and design. This is one of the issues with our mentality. We cannot make our own template. We are not able to determine our goals, thus we keep comparing ourselves to the past. However, this is a relative concept. Perhaps we improved a little, but we need to decide whether this is enough for us to reach our goal. In order to do so, we need to outline our goals.

-What is the first step to outlining our goals?

-First, we need to accept that our society including us do not know anything. In today’s society, all the problems were caused by our mentality. There are a lot of things that we don’t know about behind out mentalities. We need to list all the things that we don’t know about and find those things out.

-You talked about the common mentality errors that people make. Could you elaborate on this?

-Assuming that we can’t do it anyways, we don’t try anything new, but if we want to then we can do it whenever. The only thing holding us back is the fact that we don’t want to. Be responsible. The biggest flaw is us thinking that we know things, when in reality, we don’t. The most dangerous thing about not knowing is that the person approaches a person who they think know. Even if the other person gave poison, they swallow it anyways. This is the danger of not knowing. You can’t know whether the person talking in front of you is telling the truth or not. You can’t filter that. When a caucasian comes to our society and say anything, we accept it. This is the fault of not knowing ourselves. If they know, then what is the use in this. The main thing is it is unfortunate to see that we are not moving towards wanting to find out.

 -How did you first get your knowledge of system thinking?

-Since entering the private sector in 2005, I have fallen and gotten back up on my feet many times. It was a sour experience. All the mistakes and success that I have faced in my life are teachers. When people fall, they say “Ouch. I fell” and get back up. Similarly, after constantly searching for things, I came across it. If we have problems, what is the source of this? It is in our mentalities. Don’t look for it in anything else. Only then, people will learn about things that they don’t know about. In the future, keep stepping on sturdy stairs that will surely lead to success. Before reaching success, mistakes and failures will definitely occur. You have to keep going consistently. You have to make every mistake into an advantage.

-Please share with us the mistakes that you have made.

-Before, when two people were fighting in an organization, I yelled at both of them and made them leave, telling them to get along. When there are two people fighting in an organisation, it means that the structure of the system is having turbulence. Where this is found out is through conflict of interest, different understandings, different information, and the the different acknowledgement of their work. The one who decides these are the company head, the director. In brief, it means that the organization’s rules not working are shown through two people fighting.

 -In your organization, what do you you focus on when it comes to making your employees creative and efficient?

-There is no magical solution. Taking steps and doing work to understand the answer is discovery in itself. People doing work are creating new things. What is a creation? Find a new idea. Find the link of the information that you collected. By doing this, you can sort the information and generate new idea. You need to collect information to help you think in order and do your job. When we think about creativity, we think of things that are extremely far off. No. Being creative is talking about switching the order of two things. Creativity can be found in everyone’s head. This is what life requires anyways.

-The common understanding is that if there is a good theory, then people will be able to use it directly. Yet, there may be other results depending on the environment used and the people that it cover. How does a Mongolian person’s speciality affect this?

-Behind the words that we say and the moves we make, the Mongolian mentality lies behind it. However, if you give a German and a Mongolian person the same model and the same information, they will reach the same conclusion. Mongolian people’s lifestyle specialities are always affecting our mentality. In my opinion, Mongolian people have two specialities. One is the amazing wide range thinking. If you go to Eastern Europe or other countries, they are taught that children can’t do this from the beginning. Mongolian kids on the contrary ask why they are not allowed to do this and are only relieved once they try it out. Unfortunately, following this, they have a very big flaw. They think very dysfunctionally. They take the side that capitalism is skipping logical thinking. Therefore, their observations always become false ones. Moreover, it is evident the decisions that they will make based on this way of thinking. In my opinion, if you organize this thought structure of Mongolians, there is nothing that they can’t do. They need to use their time efficiently and learn thinking in order from the beginning. The most important resource is time. You can’t give anything to it, take anything from it, but you are always nostalgic of it.