Life Coach - Step 13 of 100 - People, events and ideas

One of the highlights of my day is my lunch with my colleagues. We will start with gossip - he said that to her and she did this to him, etc, then move to events - Super Bowl, elections in US and then we will move to ideas.

We will pick up a topic randomly and each one of us will comment on it. None of us are experts. We all have half baked knowledge. But the insights I get from each of the lunch conversation makes it a power lunch.

The topic last week was whether house prices in US have bottomed out. No one is allowed to comment without giving reasons for the reasoning. So the reasoning developed like this - I am only providing the end results of the power lunch .

Statement: The prices are not bottomed out.

Why?
Let us assume that there are 400 million people in US. Assuming 3 people per house (these are just numbers from thin air) there will be approximately 125 million units with error margin of 10%. We assume that 20 million of houses are rental homes and 5 million are second homes. That implies we are looking at 100 million homes as owned homes. Roughly 10 million must be unsold homes. So we have 90 million homes where people live. If at least one third are fully paid, we have 60 million homes not fully paid. There was news of 2 million houses foreclosed and 8 million houses on the border line. Every year 4 million houses are being added to market. People are worried about the jobs and would rather delay big purchases.

Then the issue comes up what is the right price to buy a house. Someone says it is when the EMI equals your rent, otherwise it makes sense renting a house. But arent we building an asset even if rent is lower than EMI.

And then a collegue will comment how the house she is looking for has depreciated in last one year and is still showing "for sale" board.

I dont know if prices are bottomed out. But what I learn is the art of thinking how a problem is analysed. And it all started with an idea - have houses bottomed out.

Assuming that the officer's mess hosts a party every fortnight - roughly 26 parties a year and during annual exercises, bridge training camps for 30 days, we are looking at at least 50 opportunities for officers to be discussing ideas.

As a CO you should be the one to initiate a topic every time you get together and moderate it. You would need to do some homework. Any new topic that arises out of the discussion could be your next topic.

Question time:
Does any leader who you have served with promoted such discussions? If so what was the technique the CO used? What were the topics discussed?