Chapter 1. - Stress - The Control Valve

Chapter 2. - Group Climate and Corporate Culture

Chapter 3. - The Meaning of Behavior

Chapter 4. - SELF Confidence

Chapter 5. - Disengaging the Past

Unit 2. - Paradigm Change

Chapter 6. - Paradigm

Unit 3. - Agreement Strategies

Chapter 7. - Agreement

Chapter 8. - Removing Road

blocks Chapter 9. - Managing Synergy

The pilot intended to land his passengers safely in Los Angeles. Performance Shaping Factors unawarely drew his attention to other matters. He died in a midair collision.

Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs) are elements in human behavior which, like walking, happen unawarely and automatically to control and design your actions. PSFs, together with your aware intention, determine your behavior. PSFs can overrule your intention and your aware intent can override the pervasive and usually unaware PSFs. In complex facilities the cost of PSFs is so well known and so great that these factors cannot be ignored. Meantime, in business and industry such loss is absorbed as part of the cost of doing business. A decade ago this was acceptable. Today these costs are too significant to be ignored.

Unintentional behavior can be devastating in complex technology. One error can cost millions or billions, and take the lives of hundreds or thousands. Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) is the calculation of the probability of an accident due to a PSF. The field was developed to calculate in detail the likely effects of various control action errors in facility operation. When an engineer decides to install an electric twist switch to control a steam valve, the operator can perceive the action in two ways. If the operator is thinking "steam system", that is, if his paradigm is thermodynamic, he will twist the valve clockwise to turn it off. If, however, he is musing about the excellence of the electrical system before him, and how well it serves to control the plant, he will twist that same switch counter clockwise to turn it off, according to the paradigm of electrical standards. PRA can statistically predict the likelihood of error caused by installing such a switch, and the savings which will result if a different sort of switch is used.

PRA can also be used to identify the costs of how a supervisor or manager relates to an employee. When a supervisor orders an action with a tone of parental superiority, and if the employee is one who often reacts against authority, the combination has a high assignable value of risk for error and for low productivity. Various types of error and poor production can be related to the kinds of disruptive PSFs.

The implications are vital for organizations in a competitive market. As you begin to tackle the problem, understand that the PSFs are largely mechanical, unintentional automatic behavior or habits. They are predictable, their results anticipated and their cost calculated. In spite of the fact that they are deeply imbedded in the behavior of your personnel, they can be controlled and managed well and accurately.

While PRA and other approaches to estimating the cost of various PSFs are not of interest to the Designed Change Process (DCP), it can be used to identify and measure PSFs. Most important, the DCP will identify, predict and control these forces for you in your organizational setting.

A pilot flying a weapons system becomes an integrated whole which operates automatically in an exquisite interlocking dynamic. Her learned responses (the human automatic PSFs) integrate with the aircraft and its automatic systems to become one whole automatic system. The pilot's learned responses are automatic. They are largely unaware. They control her performance just as PSFs in you and your workers (after they have been "tamed") will unawarely enhance, produce, sustain and extend performance in your workplace at levels which individuals already know are possible, pleasurable and productive.

Just as there are factors which impede or enhance the performance of computers, there are factors which control personnel, personnel at all levels. Voltage surges, static, dampness, heat, cold and jarring can greatly interfere with the accuracy of a computer. Similarly, stress, interpersonal strife, old habits, others' opinions, and childhood issues can interfere with work and cause errors and poor performance. These have come to be called Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs).

The usual management dictum, "Behave accurately in spite of such forces", has the same effect on workers that shouting a demand for no further voltage spikes has on the computer's power supply. The result has been increasingly costly, and organizations are currently showing more interest in how they can save money through informed management of the force of PSFs.

Most organizations do not consider taking a look at measurement of the cost of accepting PSFs which impede excellence, except those industries that regularly consider probabilistic risk assessment. Currently more organizations are interested in at least guessing what their cost might be. What is the cost, for example, of sustaining employee resentment or executive empire building. Even the cost of "Cover Your Ass" (CYA) is substantial, and something that, for example, the Johnson Space Center cannot afford and does not permit. The difference between the attention and performance of an employee to her task who has just been served divorce papers by her husband and one who has just had breakfast with a team or unit member in a pleasant cafe, will be considerable. As you increase your familiarity with the various PSFs you can begin to assign weight or even dollars to the effects on employee performance. A wise thousand hour pilot comes aboard and says to his copilot, "I just had a fight with my wife and I'm upset. Watch my back today". In such a genuinely mutual management system everyone will know at least the disabling disruptions in an employee's or manager's life, while in a CYA hierarchical system, they will be carefully hidden.

To understand the interrelated systems of the PSFs, which constantly shift and change in a concert of interacting alterations, you must shift from linear to dynamic thinking. Then you can begin to observe the kinds of error and lowered performance that are common in any particular unit of your organization. The type of error will be diagnostic of the kinds of PSFs that are making that unit ineffective. You can develop formulae to tell you the amount of cash that one particular disruption will cost or is costing. For example, errors of commission may be the result of resentment at the boss or organization while those of omission may be the result of low motivation, with its own discoverable causes.

The five kinds of PSFs being considered (stress, group climate, the meaning of behavior, SELF Confidence and old behavior patterns) are almost entirely unaware, invisible. Their costly effects are almost as difficult to notice. They become part of the background, "part of the cost of doing business". They are automatic responses and only rarely deliberate. They are (annoyingly) rarely accessible to voluntary change by the individual. "Stop that" can be agreed to and followed for those moments when the employee or executive can pay aware attention to whatever "that" is. As soon as the individual turns his attention to another area of importance, the area in which the PSF is functioning goes "on automatic". Then the old behavior returns. For this reason, the whole area of Performance Shaping Factors infuriates most managers and workers. Everyone expects employees to perform as required regardless of conditions. Everyone expects the same of their computers. Managerial automatic and unaware habit patterns are PSFs which can destroy the otherwise excellence of the manager or executive. They will persist until they can be tamed through the process of dynamic thinking.

We are socially conditioned to believe that everything we do is aware and intentional. The amount of information which an individual processes is astronomical. Only a small portion can be aware. Imagine how difficult it would be to walk if at every step you had to check the tensions in your legs and compare that with the balance center in your inner ear. Yet you do this constantly. The fact is, you did this checking every step you took as you taught yourself how to walk. It might be worth stating right now that learning what PSFs are and how to set the human stage so that it works for you is like learning how to walk. You will have to explore and practice every detail. Gradually it will be built into your dynamic thinking.

"Pay attention" can have a high cost. If you "pay attention" to each step of your morning toiletries you may end up brushing your teeth with the Preparation H. Imagine a pilot "paying attention" to each action she must take in a complex flight. You are able to pay attention to the overall operation, as to your walking, but the details, such as how you compare your inner ear balance center with the muscle tensions in your legs, are best left to the Automatic function.

If you keep in mind what a child is doing as she learns how to walk you will become more patient with yourself and others around you as you learn the dynamics of how human beings really behave. A tool we find useful, and therefore one we will use and impose on you, is to make a clear distinction between you and what you have learned. Carry the distinction we make between the walker and the walking, because, when it comes to interpersonal learning we tend to confuse the learned behavior with the individual who did it. We say. "John is an angry person", while the truth is, "John has learned to use anger". You can explore this further under SELF esteem (Unit 4). The tough part is that John is unlikely to simply abandon his anger, even when it causes him trouble. You will explore this and ways out in unit five.

We call these two human mental functions the "Aware Function" (of minuscule capacity) and the "Automatic Function" (of huge capacity). Explore that capacity well. As soon as you are doing something which exceeds your aware capacity you must rely on your Automatic Function to take over for you. If the Automatic is programmed incorrectly, your response will be perfect, but incorrect.

There are many types of thinking using various portions of Aware and Automatic processing. Creative and logical (inductive and deductive) are two extremes. Stress acts on the two functions as a control valve and can determine what is available to you. Dynamic thinking, the ability to hold a changing dynamic in your mind as it shifts and alters in countless but predictable ways, is another type of thinking. You will be confronted with it throughout this work. In linear logical thinking, things don't change. Dynamic thinking assumes that as you think, what you are thinking about is changing, often radically. You will become able to think in terms of a symphony of interconnected systems. Those systems, like the spinning gyroscope, are lawful.

Don left the meeting in a hurry, and he was still smiling. It had been a pleasant as well as a productive session. "Why couldn't they all be that way?" he thought. The meeting had been filled with laughter and foolishness, as some of the best engineers and sales people in the company met to design a new product to bring them out of the current business slump. Don recognized that the foolishness served a good purpose. It kept the group loose and creative. They had been unusually capable of listening to each other and of following ideas through to completion.

Now it was Don's job to write up the findings of the meeting and to describe clearly and in detail the new product they had initiated. There were still many loose ends, and even the possibility that the product couldn't go. His smile of delight began to fade as he began to concentrate on how he was going to organize and write up the material he had in his head.

Unawarely, Don and his fellow workers were using their feelings to control their thought processing with accuracy. During the brainstorming and designing meeting the stress level was carefully kept low. This permitted a greatly enhanced lateral or creative thinking process. Several members of this planning group knew the importance of open brainstorming, and the usefulness of low stress in the midst of the high stress of the pressing need for results. As Don went to his desk, his ease from the pleasure of the meeting was replaced with the stress of the pressure to produce. Unawarely, Don was deliberately increasing the stress level, as most of his colleagues had learned to do during college or graduate school. Now his brain needed to think in a more logical and linear way. The stress would help him concentrate.

When an organization goes through a period of creative activity such as designing a new product people with "productive" headsets can spoil the development of ideas by asking questions like, "How can we ever do that? That's impossible". The unpleasant feelings experienced by those who had just been enthusiastically engaged in development can easily block any ongoing creative discussion. Stress narrows perceptions and limits thought. Similarly, after the project is well under way and a delivery date has been set with the customer, some uncontrollably "creative" individual might come up with an obviously better design. To adopt it would mean missing the delivery date. The resulting discussion comes dangerously close to interfering with deadlines. Ease and multiplicity leads to broader perception and broader thinking.

Accurate use of stress and other factors will act as control valves to thought, perception and behavior, both intentionally and unawarely. During the meeting, Don used one part of his brain to think openly. With skill, things can be considered completely without concepts. Concepts are learned containers used to hold ideas. The concepts include associated conceptual systems (paradigm) which may so direct the thought of the individual and the group that genuinely new ideas cannot be held. Thought which is largely free of concepts is called by such terms as "creative", "lateral", "contemplative", "meditative" or "open". It appears to arise from one area of the brain. In contrast with this intensely aware form of thinking is automatic thought. For example, when an aviator uses a complex weapons system, he manages literally billions of bits of information every one second, and does it all automatically. When the pilot skims over the mountain barrier and delivers a bomb load or a gun burst on a target not visible an instant before, his responses must be perfect, or as near perfect as possible. Not one bit of creative thought can be afforded at that moment.

The human brain is an exquisite computer system which rarely makes an error. Such problems as "mistakes" and "forgetting" are unfortunate terms in referring to the brain. It cannot, for instance, forget. Stress, kinds and levels, are a key to accurate use of the human thinking system. The aviator using a complex weapons system must maintain some degree of high stress in order to manage all those complex actions automatically. In contrast, learning to fly requires a different kind and intensity of stress. Developing a product is a low stress activity. Writing a report or producing a product must be done in a setting of higher stress.

For business and industrial purposes, one way in which forms of stress can differ from one another is whether it is somehow perceived as going "with" the work, or "against" it. Work congruent stress helps to both increase concentration and attention, and motivate the worker to quick and accurate production. Work incongruent stress interferes with work, cuts across it. My favorite example is an amusing incident at Heathrow Airport when I was waiting for Captain Bancroft, senior pilot and head trainer for British Overseas Airways. I stood as directed under a sign that read "BOAC Pickup Point". Before me a round pad that looked like a heliopad had just been repaved, and a brand new sign was posted at the driveway entrance saying, "Busses and taxis only". Two very young and very rosy cheeked Bobbies holding new citation booklets walked up to each offending auto and issued a citation. I knew exactly what was going to happen to Captain Bancroft. I warned him just before the Bobbies descended on him. No explanation would deter them from their citation. He was steamed. Moments later, meeting with a half dozen trainers about such things as "work incongruent stress" (a cause of aircraft accidents), Captain Bancroft would go blank. His vacant look would happen when I was explaining such facts as that stress has a clearly different effect on the two functions (the Automatic and the Aware). If I talked about a specific crash, the congruent stress would draw his attention. If I talked about the huge capacity of the human brain (a less stimulating subject for him) he would be "distracted" by his anger at the Bobbies, the incongruent stress.

The example of Captain Bancroft illustrates one category of "different kinds of stress" that control human thinking, work congruent stress and work incongruent stress. Another way to consider some of these same effects of stress on perception and thought is through the concept of motivation. Under the name "emotion" (notice the word "motion" buried in the word "emotion") stress is considered as a motivator, a mover. Here again stress gets into the human processing system and does its work by altering how both the Aware Function and the Automatic Function of the brain process information.

Feelings, stress and emotion are largely individual concerns. They are deeply (and lawfully) imbedded in individual dynamic. When the individual is in a group, those feelings are directly connected with and subject to the dynamics of the group. The feelings, stress and emotion of the individual then become the business and concern of the group.

The human brain is a powerful and accurate information processing system. It requires careful management of feelings, stress and emotion in order to assure that it will process the way the individual or the organization wishes. Management of your own human system and of the dynamics of the group will depend on your ability to think dynamically. You will need to be able to hold changes in multiple dynamics in your mind at all times.

The second shift of operators at the Burntwood Nuclear Plant were happy to leave. The night shift had learned to dread what they might find left behind by that bunch. Only last week there was a malfunction in the turbine control system. It wasn't enough to shut down the plant, but if there had also been a malfunction of the turbine or a disruption of the power grid, their inability to control the turbine would have been costly. The problem was traced to some dried coffee which had seeped down into the contacts. There was no way to identify the culprit, but it was universally assumed (even by them) that the second shift had spilled the coffee. They often left half filled cold cups on the control panel, along with incomplete paper work.

Individually, the members of the second shift crew were excellent workers. They were skilled, mostly ex-Navy nukes, who liked their work. As a result of complaints from crews that worked with (or, rather, after) them, each individual had been spoken to by managers and trainers. The result was always the same. The individual never had behaved in such a sloppy way before, and would not any longer. But each, after a time, returned to the behavior that the group culture required even while he and the rest of the plant staff wanted to stop it.

Linear thinking would continue to focus attention on individuals, who "should" stop the dangerous behavior and act up to par. Dynamic thinking is required to understand how a rotating gyroscope behaves. Dynamic thinking accepts that individual action is contained both within the dynamic of the individual and held in the dynamic of group climate. Some of us who could think dynamically decided that the unaware power of the group climate was just too strong for any one individual to change. The crew was disbanded and divided among the other four crews, all of which were excellent. The disruptive behavior disappeared. Shortly the crews were reassigned so that the needed five crews were recreated. Still no disruptive behavior. Excellence had become part of the group climate or culture of each crew, thus assuring excellent operation of the plant on all shifts.

Thinking dynamically assumes that individuals, managers and workers alike, are contained within a dynamic of behavior which can be described as "group climate" and "corporate culture". Dynamic thinking is how you have to think about the way a gyroscope behaves when it is spinning and then you push it. As you learn to think this way the behavior in your unit will begin to make new sense. It becomes especially clear when you combine what you know now about the power of group climate with the interpersonal meaning of behavior you will learn about in Chapter 3. Dynamic thinking will be difficult until you have trained yourself. Then you will notice that the culture of a group is a container which you and other group members can use to manage the group.

(Footnote. Use your dynamic thinking to understand how, in a similar situation with a disruptive crew, the disruptive behavior showed up on another crew after all the changes had been made. That made it obvious that one individual caused the disruption, because the undesirable behavior continued in the new crew. He was identified and dismissed.

The concept of a real and objective human dynamic with a life of its own is usually rejected by people who haven't learned to think in a way that can hold the information. Several images may help you to hold and use this part of reality. For example, a simple linear dynamic is a flywheel, such as is in a friction toy or some engines. One thrust is followed by another until the wheel can hold as a life of its own the sum of the power you or the piston strokes put into it. A human dynamic may have, in addition to the present and observable forces, the forces recorded in the brains of the members since childhood. Often religious and patriotic groups manage to hold much more forceful sway over their members because of all the childhood meanings and forces they stimulate.

Individuals within a group climate do, often mindlessly, what the climate dictates. A child in school may only act according to what is "cool". In adult social situations such as work, the sanctions and controls exercised by the group over the individual are sophisticated and invisible. Becoming enthusiastic over a manager's new project may be excluded by the climate, and to do so may feel and be dangerous. When these thoughts are brought to your attention, you may react with denial. You just do not respond that way awarely and it's hard to believe that you do constantly unintentionally. Most of these performance shaping factors are unconscious. You do it without knowing it. One means of defeating an unwanted response required by group pressure is to make it aware. Then, of course, you can choose not to comply. But if your attention is elsewhere, as it will be if you are a good employee, you will go back to acting as required by the dynamic.

The human dynamic of the group is a powerful force which operates unawarely. You can do more to think dynamically (in order to thwart or use effectively the group climate) by identifying various dynamics. Notice that the sun and its planets are held captive in a powerful dynamic. The dynamic is real and has direct effect on your life today, whether you want it, know it, or accept it. Life itself is a dynamic. The only difference between a dead cell and a living one is the dynamic interconnections which are called "life". The cell remains the same substances when the dynamic is interrupted. Play with these ideas and develop the concept of "dynamic". You can end with the images you develop from imagining an atom of lead and an atom of gold. They are composed of exactly the same particles. In fact a gold coin and a lead sinker of the same weight contain exactly the same number of exactly the same subatomic particles. The only difference is the dynamic in which each is held.

Then take this example of lead and gold, that they are exactly the same except for the dynamic which holds their particles, and apply it to your organization. You can have the same people in one dynamic, then in another, but the results can be completely different, depending on the group climate or the corporate culture. Now that you are thinking dynamically rather than linearly, notice that with the right alchemy you could take your leaden department and turn it into gold. Simple. All you have to do is think dynamically, and then learn a few simple rules about how to change the dynamic, the group climate.

The rules are simple. The group will continue to do what it has done until there is a new group climate. Do an action that violates the group climate. Then the group will react. Action - reaction. The reaction soon will become the new group climate. The group will do what it has come to do. The process is always mutual, that is, an action - reaction process. A group acts and reacts mostly without any awareness. A group will react to a disruptive (new) behavior. If the reaction is favorable, the new behavior becomes the group climate. If the reaction is unfavorable the new behavior is rejected and thereafter more forcefully excluded.

Using the simple action - reaction process you can change group climate. If you are thinking dynamically rather than linearly you will observe that although the process is lawful, it won't follow the rules linear thinking will lead you to expect. You have only to observe and you will quickly learn the rules by which the group acts. Then you can time new action so that others will welcome it. You can befriend some members and talk with them until you know that they will welcome your ideas. When they do, the group may endorse the whole affair and your new action becomes the group climate through the action - reaction process.

You are now thinking dynamically. You are in a position to use the forces of group climate to work for you rather than against you.

The new product looked like a gem. There was widespread excitement about it. The meeting was a pleasure to all who had been present. Then Ed Brown, the unit manager spoke against the product. He stated that the team would drop it and called for them to design an alternative. He gave a few weak reasons. His assistant passed out materials which described a different product which we would be expected to prepare for production. It was obvious, at least to a few, that Ed Brown was in mortal competition with one of the engineers who had introduced the new product that we had been developing. It was a tough project, so Ed expected it to fail. When it succeeded, Ed had to sabotage the project and insert a new one, at considerable cost to the company.

Behavior comes to have meaning in human life. From the earliest moments of childhood the tones of voice and types of actions are recorded with a multitude of meanings. Most of these meanings are interpersonal, certainly the important meanings. Most of the meanings are part of social conditioning, the culture of the society. These same meanings become attached to behavior in the workplace at all levels as part of corporate culture.

Of all the Performance Shaping Factors, the interpersonal meaning of behavior is the most obvious and simple to learn and use. It accounts for eighty to ninety percent of group climate. When someone violates group climate the meaning of that violation is the power which forces the individual to conform. Human behavior is controlled by something other than present intent. Think in terms of the dynamic of changing meanings. This is a step toward understanding Performance Shaping Factors as forces which control business performance.

Perhaps you have ongoing conflict with a fellow worker at some level. Carefully note what the actions (tones of voice, resistance, disagreement, vocabulary and all the other nonverbal means we use to send messages along with our business) mean within the context of the relationship you two have. You will discover that you are communicating on two levels at once. Sometimes it is useful to draw those bubbles cartoonists use to represent thoughts that are being experienced while two people are talking. Fool around with it for long enough and you will accumulate a mass of material which supersedes the purposeful business communications. One can say that in most human interaction we are enmeshed in a dynamic of meanings that control (PSFs) almost all of our behavior. Probably your unit won't see any decent work handed off between you and this conflict person until you alter the meanings the work has to each other.

Altering the meanings is, fortunately, extremely simple. For example, you can say sarcastically, as you hand on to your "opponent" some excellent work, "Wanted to give you more lousy work because that's all you deserve, but I don't like doing lousy work, so you will have to suffer with excellence. If you can stand it." A unit manager can say, "We have a new training format coming up. It promises to not only make life easier and more pleasant around here but also to increase production. You know we have tried several things. I believe that some didn't work because they didn't fit us. I also know, and so do you, that some didn't work because you wanted to make management look bad. Suppose someone came in with a way for us to become more productive and at the same time enjoy it more. Would you have to defeat it just to show how bad the managers are, or that the company doesn't deserve more work out of you without more pay, so you will remain disagreeable and unhappy just to show how awful they are? I dare you to give this one a chance." In this speech there are several challenges to the interpersonal meaning of behavior likely to be held by individuals in the unit. It also will feel risky, as any challenge to the group climate will. This can significantly disrupt a nonproductive group climate. Notice that there is no "right way" to do any of this because the dynamic of each group is so different. Each is specific to that group. You will explore and discover how the group you are concerned with functions through your dynamic thinking.

Begin to think about relationships of all kinds through the comic balloons. Gradually you will train yourself to take this first step to dynamic thinking. You will notice that major parts of what is called group dynamics easily begins to make sense. It will be observably lawful, predictable and manageable. This is addressed to employees at all levels. A manager can be managed through the meaning of her behavior as easily as subordinates. Explore and learn. A dynamic powerful and controlling. It has a life of its own. The strength of the dynamic leads managers and employees to blame each other for refusing to change.

Playing with the interpersonal meaning of behavior as a dynamic force will enable you to teach yourself how we human beings function automatically most of the time. To the extent that you discover this as true, you will stop wasting your time in your exclusive focus on the individual and her intentional behavior. This is linear thinking. Now you understand that she and you are both held within a dynamic, and that how you behave will be controlled not by your will but by that dynamic. This provides the paradigm shift that you need to become a manager or employee capable of managing your own behavior and that of others. The overall control of the behavior in the workplace is unintentional and resides more in what the behavior means than in what the individual would awarely choose to do.

Many assumed that Harry was having an affair with Sylvia. He often brought her gifts - flowers, coffee or candy. He even took her out to lunch. But friends were quick to say, "No". It turned out that Harry was the only person in the department who always got his work back from Sylvia on time. Behavior done for its meaning is usually more subtle. In factories and offices the hand-offs are great places to see the meaning of behavior in action. "Enemies" hand each other shoddy work and try to blame the errors on each other. They withhold information. They argue.

Begin to notice this dynamic with your kids, parents, boss, employee. Write down or diagram the flow of meaning. Practice thinking dynamically. Almost all disruptions, feuds and intense conflicts in any human setting can be understood through observing what each element means to the participants. Usually these common disrupters of excellent work flow are childhood unresolved conflicts. You can observe the vocabulary and tone of voice and easily identify the roles. The unfortunate part of this activity is that we have for so long attempted to defend or deny our personal issues that, while everyone else can easily observe them, we cannot observe ourselves until we train ourselves to see them. Until then, "personality clashes" will continue to disrupt excellence and productivity. Start now to observe yourself with your new skills in dynamic thinking and notice how you can make change merely by changing the meaning of a behavior.

"OK, you son of a bitch. I've got you", says the pilot of a complex weapons system an instant before he accidentally blows his buddy out of the sky.

The "gung ho" macho male response, cultivated usefully (usually) in the imprecise sport of football can lead a person to try to act beyond his actual capabilities. We often have strength and skills beyond what we believe we are capable of and the "gung ho" stance may tap into them. Using this mode, we can also take action which is not accurate, which does not rely upon an accurate assessment of ability and which sets us up for error and failure.

SELF confidence is an accurate assessment of an individual's assets. Since an employee's assets are what one was hired for, they need to be known and must be available. Both the false "modesty" and the "I can too" stance distort perceptions of the major asset a person has in his workplace: his SELF.

This simple fact has been understood for some time. "Self knowledge" has been a by-word in staff development. However, as one comes to know one's self more extensively, all those nasty little habits, which have been denied, explained, hidden or ignored, come to the surface. Perhaps there is that nasty anger reaction, or the willingness to do anything for anyone just to please, or the chronic procrastination, or the upset response to authorities, employees, the opposite gender or the same gender. In short, it has been experienced that as self knowledge increases, self esteem (hence self confidence) decreases. The individual and her organization suffer loss from what was to have been helpful learning.

We have found that when a person understands that there are two functions in human thinking, the Aware and the Automatic, increased self knowledge can go hand in hand with increased self esteem. This is because most (we actually believe "all") of what people discover and then don't like about themselves turns out to be old learned responses (habits). If something is automatic, like a habit of always pleasing others, it is something you learned in the past. You learned to walk as a child. But how you walk is not you. It is only how you learned to walk. How you respond to others is also a learned response. It is called "social conditioning". Everyone, from the CEO to you, is responding with socially conditioned behavior. Most of how people behave in an organization is childhood response, especially under stress and in emergencies. Some of these childhood behaviors we approve of (particularly parental behaviors which seem to be helpful and necessary), and some we disapprove of (particularly childlike responses such as helplessness and rebellion). Before we leave this, note that parental behaviors (most of the behaviors which you will observe among supervisors and managers under stress) are childhood learnings. You can observe them in three year olds bossing two year olds.

So which of these is the real "me"? The answer is elusive but clear. The critter that taught herself how to walk, the being that discovered how to talk, the elusive existence that learned how to manipulate parental noises - whatever this is, is the only real you, and we choose to call it your SELF. The others are all learned responses, your own inventions. Yes. YES, yes yes. You are responsible for those mean or embarrassing responses you invented or copied. But they are not the same as the you (SELF) that developed them. We have found that calling this elusive creature, the original you, the "SELF", and then encouraging you to slowly begin to define it yourself, is the best way to make the distinction you need to make. You can get to know yourself and also your SELF. One is the very important things you have taught yourself, and the other is the you that did it. Yes, it's true that a few psychologists believe that you are nothing more than the sum of the stimuli you have been subject to, but the sum of their stimuli made them think that, so you can dismiss them. Actually, as you work to develop SELF confidence you will discover how wrong those psychologists are.

SELF confidence is an accurate appraisal of your own personal specifications. They are what they are. In contrast, "conditioned confidence" (don't completely dismiss it, particularly if you are a football player) is a learned stance or attitude which defines yourself outside of who you really are. This is what psychologists call "compensation", in which short men do big things (they often do), frightened men act angry. If that scared man is with a woman he is protecting, and says, "Don't worry dear, I know exactly what to do", he probably doesn't. In the field of management, conditioned confidence can be a disaster. Bill Zawe, the senior reactor operator at Three Mile Island, knew exactly what to do, and his crew believed him. Too bad he didn't know the dangers of "conditioned confidence". It was costly. How much does it cost you as an individual? How much does it cost your organization?

How do we find the SELF? First off, we have been knocking stress (it's useful, so don't just knock it) as stimulating childhood learned responses, like parent or child role responses, like conditioned confidence, like learned self depreciation. So you won't discover the SELF in much stress. In fact, the SELF seems to be the awareness we have been noticing within relaxed ease. It's the SELF that becomes randomly free in inventing during low stress brainstorming. That SELF is your creativity.

First learn to relax. Then you can begin to explore your specifications, your assets. These are the things you bring to every relationship, be it business or personal. These are the qualities you used as you learned to walk, to talk and to manipulate or copy your parents and to invent responses. These are the things that you may have learned to hide as a child. You may have had to conceal your independence, your self reliance, your warmth or responsiveness, and to dismiss your intelligence and attractiveness.

As you explore who you are and observe your own internal dynamics, start thinking dynamically about yourself. Notice how some habits run whether you want them to or not. You may notice that sometimes an unwanted habit takes over the more you don't want it and try to stop it. That's because all that attention makes it a dominant response and force in your life. Dominant responses are those most likely to act automatically on your behalf.

When you explore your SELF you will notice with relief that there is really no dynamic in your SELF. Your intelligence, your resourcefulness and your responsiveness, these qualities just are. No issue. Your SELF isn't doing. Your SELF just is.

In November, 1987, the pilot of a DC-9 attempted to take off from Denver Airport in a snow storm, and with considerable annoyance (incongruent stress) at the air traffic controller. This pilot had about forty hours flying the DC-9, and over a thousand on a 727. As he began to operate the DC-9 he regressed (as automatic behavior will, under stress) to the more familiar 727 behavior. At forty feet he was in a stall. He and twenty seven passengers died because his brain regressed under stress to a familiar behavior pattern.

The human brain cannot forget, except as a result of cell damage, and possibly as a consequence of psychedelic enzymes or drugs. That means that all your memories remain to plague or please you. The old behaviors of the members of your organization persist. Permanently. Changes are often managed well for a time. People "pay attention". But the brain has limited attention, and if you shift your attention to another important area, what you have been doing goes on automatic. The problem is, which automatic? There are several rules which can help predict which automatic will take over, which behavioral response (the 727 or the DC9) is dominant at this particular moment in the dynamic of personal and/or group behavior. Until recently, there has been no way to keep old responses and behavior patterns (the old ways of doing things) from taking over. Often they slip back in without the person's (or even the unit's) awareness. The Designed Change Institute has a method through which an individual can "learn to forget". Computer programmers already use the method when they "patch" a program. Rather than using the costly process of rewriting a program they merely add a new order which takes the flow into a new direction. Since human programming cannot be erased and then rewritten, you must insert a patch or interrupter to assure that your old behavior (such as parent - child managing or working) will not take over for you.

With the human brain this is a simple process, but one which is so unusual (it is a paradigm shift which people naturally resist) that it is only taught under special circumstances. Your new experience with dynamic thinking will help you hold this conceptual material. Some years ago we discovered that you can build an association in your brain between any memory or behavior pattern and anything you want to insert there and add to it. One of us noted that it is exactly like having a song or a perfume or a dinner (a "cue") that you associate with a love, and then that love goes sour. Now the "cue" is associated with the new pain of loss. So, when I trained the staff at the Dinky Nuclear Plant and we agreed that when a boss such as the Senior Reactor Operator speaks out during an accident (exactly as happened at Three Mile Island) childhood responses determine that everyone will forget the vital knowledge they had been observing as the accident developed. They will follow the leader. This is an automatic response to early learned childhood experiences with a parent. So we stood everyone on chairs and we all yelled parental orders and made ridiculous parental gestures at each other (the kind managers who "lose it" make at employees in almost any setting, and the kind you will hear from the three year old parenting the two year old). The exercise was filled with laughter, which we hoped would become attached to the recorded parental behavior in the heads of the participants. Usually there is no way to tell in a short workshop how effective such an exercise would be, but we found out the next morning. One of the participants started right out by saying, "Hey Sargent. I have a problem". He said that when he arrived home after our class his wife met him at the door and he started running his usual parental "noise" on her, even shaking his finger. But all that came out of his mouth was laughter, the same laugh as in the training laboratory. At least for this operator the disruption of the old behavior had become attached to the childish parenting that some men do at their women, most parents do at their children and most managers do at their employees.

Several other participants shared how they laughed as they treated their children this way. It stopped their childhood parental behavior, but there was a problem. None of them, they said, knew how to talk with these people any other way than parentally. They knew what that means in supervisory work in the control room. The unlearning process is not complete until a new way of doing what the old pattern did has been learned. This may be no problem when you are training for a new way to fill out forms or to produce new dimensions for a machined part, but when you are supervising or managing, your childhood learned responses will rule until you learn and make familiar new ways to act, new ways to manage. The same is true for new approaches to decision making, conflict resolution and all those participatory ways in which they want you to function. Each person has learned modes of behavior in childhood. We have learned how to treat other children, siblings, and parents. Today those behaviors are how to behave with a boss, a colleague or an underling. These patterns continue to disrupt any redesign that an organization can devise and try to implement, regardless of the wishes of the individuals involved.

Every work system is fraught with instances of individuals returning to previously learned ways of doing things, even to unaware systems of work which differ markedly from what the workers know to be the correct system. However, the major and costly regressed response is in management and employee response as a dynamic in itself. Think about this dynamically. Picture the actors as held captive within the dynamic. Millions are spent revamping how a unit or an organization is structured, systems of reporting and handing off work, methods of making decisions and taking action. Then under stress or under an old style manager or even in response to an employee who always objected to the change, both employees and managers return to the familiar parent-child relating of the traditional workplace and of early childhood. Here, the pressure of a PSF blows all the training and reengineering efforts in a flash.

Parental behavior is blatantly obvious, marked by inane questions and statements, such as, "How many times have I told you?", "But you don't understand", "You don't listen to me" and "It's not fair". The early learned responses represented by these phrases, by childish gestures and whiny or loud tones quickly and easily plug into childhood issues which then are fought out in the workplace at great cost to personal serenity and organizational viability (profit).

The process of unlearning parent - child behavior is simple, but excessively difficult. Parent and child roles are clearly marked out in business and industry. They are played by the children (employees) as well as by the parents (managers). The whole thing is held in a dynamic of great and unnoticed (subliminal) power. Then, if the childhood roles are abandoned, people experience that they do not know how to act.

Although considerable time is spent in training people for new ways of doing things, they "feel" weak and ineffective. They feel dangerous, too. If you can't get the boss to tell you how to do something (usually something that was developed since she became the boss, and that you are supposed to know how to do yourself) how can you place the blame for your failure on someone else. These habits, obvious among your fellow workers, are sometimes effective in "getting the job done". Unfortunately, they are automatic childhood responses. They are mindless. They run whether or not they are effective, and they are often profoundly destructive (witness Three Mile Island).

Most workplace behavior is designed to resolve childhood issues. These issues were recorded unresolved. They will remain unresolved unless you manage to add (that's what we are talking about) "resolved" to the original learned response. This is true even when some of the original players agree to meet and resolve those disruptions. What the individual and the organization are left with is a collection of old and immutable learned responses that will cost everyone until they are "unlearned", until an effective interrupter (patch) is actually inserted inside the destructive behavior pattern itself.

Old, and especially childhood, learned responses are costly. They also seem intensely personal, even though such responses are obvious to all but the one possessing them. Removing them is frightening to most people. Most of the organization's "parents" think it unnecessary, and that people should "do what they are told".

More unacceptable still is simply to attach laughter to the unwanted behavior. Laughter is generally prohibited in any serious business. Of course, laughter is used in medicine, everywhere in aerospace and frequently by EMTs in bizarre situations. I set up a workshop for nuclear trainers and managers at Johnson Space Center, where humor "is essential". The resistance to laughter was high because nuclear plants are deadly serious, deadly. Laughter alters thought processing by altering the characteristics of the stress. It gives control back to the Aware function. Then the individual can repossess perception and thought which had been altered by the Automatic function. Inappropriate behaviors, thoughts and perceptions can then be corrected intentionally.

Unlearning past learned responses violates all social conditioning. To thoroughly get into stripping off, for example, the destructive parent and child roles associated with the work place will require dynamic thinking and a thorough paradigm shift. It is a different way of thinking about yourself and about the workplace. If an individual is genuinely successful in dislodging childhood parental or child role responses, she is left with nothing but her SELF, and the need to create new ways to do what those roles did for her. If SELF confidence is not high, and the behavioral vacuum is left for long, the childhood roles will be brought back in force.

Since it is too valuable to avoid such learning, it's just a matter of when. Now seems like a good time to start.

"Paradigm" is getting to be a popular buzz word. It refers to patterns - patterns of thought, or, more important, of perception. Relating to the management of an organizational unit in the old fashioned parent - child way provides a total system of thought and perception. The parent is paid more. The parent knows best (even when the child is more knowledgeable). The parent gives the orders, corrects and nurtures. The manager, functioning in this old framework, regresses to his childhood modeling of his parents, mostly his father. He actually replicates within the organization (as the human brain is designed to) his family of origin. There, at work, individuals relive their childhood family ways, sometimes at great expense to the company. If the childhood ways are productive, the results are magnificent. If they do not work, the individual remains caught in the childhood behaviors and is a poor employee.

Unthinkable? Human beings cannot think without concepts. The concepts act as containers. If I wish to communicate with you, as I am now doing, I need concepts to transfer the information. To be effective, you and I must have the same concepts. If you do not have the concept which I am using, my idea remains unthinkable for you. Even worse, if you have a similar concept, you may take my idea and crunch it into your own concept. Now you have my idea distorted so that it makes no sense. Think for a moment how this impedes change. Significant change requires significant new concepts. The ability to develop concepts varies with each individual. It requires some sort of open grasping of an area or idea. This requires quiet contemplation, which is not a popular business activity. Once the individual scans and contemplates the new idea, a concept begins to form.

Recently the Newtonian concept of the atom began to give way to some widely known facts. Electrons do not orbit the nuclei of atoms. They disappear and then reappear. They are better represented by some sort of force field, a describable and lawful dynamic, rather than a particle because they are both a particle and a wave. It takes some contemplation of the facts and some mathematical formulae to help develop the new concept. Without the new concept most modern technology could not exist. New approaches to management require new concepts. Without them, new management forms are simply unthinkable. Think dynamically about the atom. Then do the same for your organization.

A paradigm is even more extensive. It is a system of concepts, mostly new concepts, each of which has to be formed by the individual wishing to make the paradigm shift. For example, almost all organizational functioning is done on the basis of the social conditioning described above. Most businesses are replications of the childhood families and behaviors of the mangers, supervisors and workers. It is unthinkable for many persons that an employee might make important decisions, determine how a process will be done or engage in hiring, firing or evaluating "superiors" and colleagues. Yet many employees have knowledge, skills and perceptions which are simply not within the boss's purview. To be able to imagine new organizational forms and functions requires not only new concepts but new systems of concepts, or paradigms. Primarily, it requires that you think dynamically.

In our training we often use one of those new three dimensional images. The books Magic Eye have descriptions of how these images can be made to appear. When you look at the page and see all those meaningless images you are in one paradigm. When you use your eyes and then see the three dimensional image which is there, you have shifted to another paradigm. Several things are immediately apparent. First, you have information which those who cannot make the shift do not have. For example, you may be looking at a three dimensional chalice. I can tell you that the knop in the stem of the chalice is about three quarters of an inch in diameter. You now have that information, but it still is not observed by you as it is by those who can make the 3-D shift. We can discuss how tall the cup is, given the size of the knop, but how can you join us in the discussion until you are able to make the paradigm shift? This is exactly the kind of problem which units and organizations have until enough time has been spent to permit the new concepts to grow in each head, and the new paradigm to be experienced by each person.

The Agreement Strategies in Unit 3 offer several behaviors and methods of sustaining a beneficial system of Performance Shaping Factors. They have been tamed and aimed at pleasurable experience, accuracy and high performance. They are a paradigm shift. They both teach and require dynamic thinking. Much of the material is "unthinkable" without such a shift, not the least of which is agreement, and acceptance of a mutually supportive climate. This is in direct conflict with all the win-lose, fault, competition, fairness, approval seeking, anger, guilt and fear of the socially conditioned family of origin. Such change can be made, has been effected, can be sustained and always is productive and pleasurable. In spite of that, such personal change is threatening and intensely resisted.

The development of and then "cloning" of small cells of people who interact in beneficial new ways is a method of sustaining and managing such paradigm shifts. One example is a team of nuclear reactor operators who did poor preparation for the next shift and endanger the control system by spilling food and drink on the console. We simply disbanded the crew and placed the individuals on other crews. They conformed to the excellence of the others, and another shift in personnel reestablished five new and excellent crews. This required a paradigm shift. Months of linear thinking and managing individuals had failed. We had to think dynamically. We managed the dynamic and ignored the individuals. Managing the dynamic worked.

The Agreement Strategies are a very personal paradigm shift for the people involved. The impact of the personal disruption must not be ignored. This is a different way of thinking about groups and management, similar to that which occurred over a half century ago in the nuclear field. Experimenters fired electrons through a tiny pinhole midway to a target. They also fired bullets from a machine gun through a small hole midway to its target. The bullets formed a random mass of marks in the target, most dense in the middle and then fewer and fewer, as you view the target, away from the center. The electrons, however, made concentric circles of "hits" separated by areas of no hits at all. The electrons which should have made a diminishing density of hits concentrated at the center, did not. Those which would have scattered out from the center sometimes "hit" while they were no longer particles, thus leaving the rings of target in which there were no hits. These facts were never accepted by some scientists, while others opened their minds to see what the information could do inside their brains. Those who opened their minds to dynamic thinking were able to develop all the modern fields of technology, such as nuclear, laser and superconductivity. The others just cannot see the 3-D image, but they are enjoying the benefits. Dynamic thinking is difficult for those who are not yet familiar with it.

The Designed Change Process challenges you to abandon your socially conditioned methods of resolving issues and running business. Once you stop the old ways you will have to develop new ones. You will stop using linear thinking and parent - child management and learn to use dynamic thinking. One worry you needn't have. The person who can see the 3-D information can also easily return and discuss with you both the 3-D information and the 2-D flat sheet. No loss. Only gain. Be suspicious of "paradigm shifts" into the "mysterious". Keep your feet on the ground. At least at work.

At first appearance the 3-D picture is a flat (two dimensional) picture, or, more often, colorful squiggles of no apparent consequence. The squiggles can be made to reveal a three dimensional figure, when your eyes combine various different parts of the two dimensional design. An interesting side issue of this effect is that when you are seeing the three dimensional figure, the two dimensional is partially lost. When you are seeing the two dimensional design, the three dimensional figure is completely lost. These two (and often more) different sets of images are different paradigms.

A paradigm is a field of vision, understanding or perception. It usually contains concepts peculiar to itself. These concepts are either meaningless in another paradigm, or have a different meaning. Often one human culture is a paradigm shift from another. A sociologist was listing the words for various objects in a native culture, pointing with her finger. The first several things she pointed to were all called by the same word, or so she thought. The word was that for "finger". People in that culture pointed with their tongues. When a person moves and becomes immersed in a different culture, she suffers what is called "culture shock", a disorientation and confusion. This persists until the mind can make a paradigm shift to adjust for the new culture or thinking system.

It has been said that Eskimos have some thirty words for snow. That is a false statement. To understand how it is false you will have to make a slight paradigm shift. No language would have thirty words for the same thing. Snow (as we understand it in our paradigm) is extremely important in the life of the Eskimo. Frozen water in tiny balls identifies one kind of weather system, large flaky ice crystals another, and minute ice crystals which are only visible in the sun's reflection identify another. These conditions determine when food animals are available for hunting, or lie concealed in the water or the snow. For the Eskimo, calling each of these phenomena "snow" is like calling a scoop of chocolate ice cream and a scoop of mashed potatoes by the same word. The Eskimos have thirty words for thirty different things. Without these concepts, we can't even think about what the Eskimo thinks about, and thinks about constantly. His life remains unthinkable, just as does the new idea that John just offered in his unit meeting. No wonder they rejected it!

Business in the modern world is immersed in such a rapid change environment that whole paradigm shifts are taking place. When someone from marketing manages to catch onto the shift in the market, he must shift his paradigm to that of the individuals in the market. It means seeing or perceiving the needs from the orientation of the customer. Then the sales person communicates the needs to the manufacturing unit, and the whole message seems like gibberish. No statement of fact irritates a highly educated and intelligent executive as much as being told that what another person is saying to him is unthinkable, unthinkable within his paradigm. Something is unthinkable when there is no concept to contain it, so all completely new products are unthinkable until the person takes the time to explore and develop a concept with which to think or hold it. If it is sufficiently different, the concept cannot be contained within the executive's paradigm. He will have to develop a completely different thought or conceptual system.

During W.W.II in northern Greenland, from which area much European weather comes, the Allies had weather stations. The Eskimos were very friendly. The Axis (that's what we called the enemy) had their secret weather stations in the same remote regions. The Eskimos were very friendly. When an Axis weather station spotted an Eskimo, they killed him so they would not be discovered. The Allies had a problem. The Eskimos had no concept "enemy" and no paradigm in which some people would kill others. Many had to die before the Eskimos could develop a new paradigm in which they could grasp that the Axis weather people would kill them, and the Allies would be friendly. Probably many organizations will have to die before they catch on to the new paradigms necessary for management in a world of fast change, and hold the ability to think in dynamic terms.

Again, the 3-D pictures make a point. Many people, particularly men, cannot see the 3-D image. They cannot make their eyes do the work they have to do to create the image. Now, suppose our unit were assigned to describe and measure the dimensions of the dolphin visible only in the 3-D image (given that the tail is twelve inches across). Clearly, those in our team who cannot see the dolphin will have to trust those who can.

Impatient executives may dismiss this as foolishness. "Who cares about a hidden 3-D picture?" It is a paradigm shift. It illustrates what that executive will have to do to run his business effectively. Once the atom (meaning "indivisible") consisted of a nucleus orbited by particles called electrons, like the solar system. When it was discovered that the electrons do not orbit like planets, that they disappear and then reappear, a new paradigm was needed (including the ability to think dynamically). On this new paradigm stands all of modern science, and the technology that is the base of all modern business and industry. Management now requires a similar new paradigm.

The Designed Change Process requires a paradigm shift in how you understand yourself and any group of which you are a part. You will have to learn to think dynamically. You will have to learn how to give up various kinds of control, both of your own person and of others, in order to begin to have the effect (as manager, supervisor or foreman) you wish to have. You will learn that only after you become able to do this will it be possible to have the effect on others that you desire. Confusing? No. If you try to control others and make them accept or believe something (see the interpersonal meaning of behavior, Unit 3) they are more likely to hold off, to resist. If you learn to let go of your investments and then simply offer your concepts, perceptions and ideas, others will begin to look into them and explore them. If you accept that you will react and respond in predictable ways you will begin to catch yourself at some of the behaviors which are destroying your excellence as a worker, supervisor, manager or executive. Then, and only then, can you hope to end the control your own past exercises over you. Remember that those unaware behaviors are known to others if not to you, and they can and do use them to control you.

The products of tomorrow are largely unthinkable today. The market of tomorrow is beyond imagination. A long time ago Alvin Toffler, in Future Shock, described the disorienting cultural shifts of the fast changing world of that time. The rate has greatly accelerated, but few gains have been made in our ability to shift from one paradigm to another or to patiently wait until our minds can form the concepts needed in order to understand John's proposal in John's own perceptual orientation. Dynamic thinking is essential. Only then can we hope to discuss it intelligently. The ability to make paradigm shifts can permit you to think in different systems. The systems of different cultures are often different paradigms. The ability to appreciate the extent of the differences and the ability to silently wait for your own mind to develop new concepts and to make necessary paradigm shifts are vital for most people in any organization attempting to respond to the twentieth century, much less the twenty first.

Imagine yourself a sociologist observing current management practices. You have been taught to observe how children learn to imitate their parents. This is their first and most primitive ("childish", if you will) behavior. It is only after they have "internalized" (learned experientially, so they can replicate it) this parental behavior that they learn how to thwart and manipulate their parents. As you watch managers you will observe the most childish behavior the individual has learned. It is the same behavior you can see in the three year old bossing around the two year old. Unfortunately it is socially approved and highly valued. Then you will observe all the usual childhood behaviors designed to block, please, irritate or confuse the parent (manager). You will watch employees become disabled to get the attention of a nurturing manager, or rebellious to get the attention of the corrector. In short, you are watching a myriad of interactions which are reruns of childhood conflicts among family members. At company expense, thousands of hours and great quantities of energy are consumed in childhood issues which will never be resolved, but mightily fought.

As a sociologist, you know that the human mind has evolved in two separate ways. Evolution has left us with two different and often opposing functions. One is flexible, aware and constantly changing, evolved to meet all sorts of new conditions with new behavior for survival, and therefore endlessly creative. The other is a perfect replicator. It is designed to replicate (mindlessly, that is, unawarely and exactly) the family of origin and the society of origin. The former is the most variable, creative and innovative tool ever conceived. The automatic is the most perfect replicator of past learned response ever conceived. It is indelible and designed so that the family and society will continue long after the individuals have died, long after the behaviors serve any useful purpose. Notice how that three year old bosses the two year old. Then watch your managers.

Research indicates that your employees are spending from a third to a half of their time and energy in nonproductive behavior. Almost all is consumed by these intense childhood issues. It is a "rule of thumb" that the more intense an interaction becomes the more childhood material is at issue. These side issues are costly and unpleasant. If you can separate them out from real issues and present disagreement, as you will in Unit 8, "Removing Roadblocks", you will then produce an environment which is both more pleasant for all workers and more productive with less effort. Sounds idealistic. It is a real possibility.

These early childhood behaviors are powerful PSFs. They run your company by holding each individual in their dynamic. Even those old ways you used to fill out the forms. They lurk there waiting to take over. Under stress and following various cues, the old will reappear. Usually the old will sneak back in and take over unintentionally, destroying considerable work. You can "tame" automatic behavior until it does what you want it to do. Think dynamically about yourself, that you are contained and controlled by a past dynamic. Then stop kicking yourself and deal with the dynamic. It should be familiar. You invented it.

Active organizations are always fraught with disagreement and conflict. While some disagreement is stimulating and the source of new directions, new products and new processes, much of it is time consuming, interrupting and disrupting productive and accurate work. Civilization has fought wars for peace for countless generations. Fighting for peace puts a focus on fighting. "Conflict resolution" puts an emphasis on conflict. The Designed Change Process places the emphasis on various agreement methods. This can gradually shift individual and unit attention to the development, extension and support of agreement. It also actively preserves disagreement as an often valuable resource.

The usual cultural approaches to management are fraught with difficulty. Most of the difficulties are derived from childhood responses. People in supervisory, management, administrative and executive positions are familiar with parental stances to control and direct their subordinates. They often have one or two helpless employees to make them feel good about "helping", or, if they are correctors rather than nurturers, they will have one or two rebellious employees on whom they "get off" by correcting. This is their mutual dynamic in which they are caught and blindly held.

Because these childish parental behaviors are culturally approved they are more easily seen and criticized. Everyone knows the evils of those "ignorant fools" who run the company. Those "dependent fools" who work for the company are likely to be less visible. They like to be told what to do so they can blame someone else for their own failures. The whole childhood family is reestablished at work in a forceful and invisible dynamic. The struggles surrounding disagreement become conflict exactly like those of childhood. There is blame and win-lose. There is sibling rivalry (often called competition) making conflicts and struggles out of differences. Then there is polarization.

As adults polarized conflict becomes debate. It may interest you to recall how this works. As it starts, the disagreement cannot permit any options. There is only your position and mine. So we hammer at the other's, to diminish and destroy it, and we champion our own with whatever distorted reason and evidence we can muster. You may recall that in debating class you were asked to switch. At that point each "contestant" begins to reveal evidence of support that was concealed while that person was on "the other side". Somehow teachers and politicians believe that this is a beneficial process. Perhaps in some settings it is. But in business it hides and distorts the information that individuals could bring to the discussion, and, most vital of all, it conceals all those thousands of other options which might (and often do) satisfy all the individuals involved as well as resolve the problems being considered. The excellence literature notices that when a group functions as a "skunk works" in someone's garage, agreement, mutuality, additive stances abound. When the skunk works becomes organized, the focus shifts to issues, fought, of course, to resolve childhood memories.

Does it sound like magic? It is. It is simple, fun and productive. Idealistic? No. So, how do we get from here to there? We are glad you asked. Through the Agreement Strategies, of course, beginning with your new skills in dynamic thinking, which, for you, have made the invisible clutches of the PSFs clearly visible.

The Agreement Strategies will develop differences and integrate them into a functioning whole so that the PSFs are "tamed". There is a change of focus from defensiveness and divisiveness to dynamic inclusive perception, agreement and mutuality. Individuals become willing, open to new possibilities and able to enjoy what may develop around them. The approach is disarmingly simple in its redirection of human performance. It is a paradigm shift which can be disorienting. In the inclusive mutuality, people become empowered and pleased.

"She drew a circle that cut me out. I drew a circle that drew her in." Sometimes the simple is far more powerful than anything else. The DCP Agreement Strategies (Agreement, Removing Roadblocks and Managing Synergy) are utterly simple. They are also in a different paradigm.

For example, two friends are arguing about abortion. One shouts out for the rights of a woman to abort if she chooses. The other screams that abortion is murder. According to childhood learned responses which social conditioning brings into the workplace, the polarization requires a winner and a loser. So much for the friendship. Then one of the combatants states, "In our friendship, there is a perception that abortion is a right, and a perception that abortion is murder." In dozens of instances where this issue has been used, the instant result is a startling disruption of the argument and a shift of paradigm from childhood struggles to the present friendship. The simple "and" unites the friends in a unit which supersedes the issues and the emotional struggles.

In his book Chesapeake, Michener describes the stand of the Quakers on slavery. Also known as the Friends, they held their friendship while gradually shifting their stand on slavery. Their process was and is that which we have "borrowed". This first agreement strategy is no more and no less than describing disagreements as agreements. Or so it seems. If you do that persistently, you and your unit will effect a paradigm shift. Gradually you will come to believe that your unit is more important than the disagreement. You will discover that disagreement is enriching and necessary. You will come to preserve the various perceptions of team members. You will also be delighted when one of those "kooky" ideas becomes the solution to a long impossible problem. You will establish the business unit as a real and pleasantly viable group.

The process is simple. Depending on what you do in a team-like approach, you will discover the benefits of describing the group consensus in very clear and opposed terms, but always the clerk will assign no opinion to a member or group of team members. All opinions are of the group. They can be identified as a "lone voice", a "majority", or as a "minority", but always they are "our joint agreement", held in the dynamic of our group.

Thinking dynamically, you already recognize that the moment the "agreement" is announced it begins to change within the life of the group in which it is held. Among the Friends, as discussion goes on, the process is interrupted by the clerk to announce the sense of the meeting, the group agreement. This provides a basis for new discussion and a recollection of perceptions not recently mentioned. This agreed upon disagreement is the group consensus. It acts as a base for the next discussions, until it is tabled for the future.

As you learn to think dynamically you recognize that a consensus always exists in a group. It is the sum of all the opinions of the members connected with one another, if only by "and". The consensus is held within the dynamic or synergy of the group. All action is taken the same way, from within the dynamic, which makes every action mutual.

It is worth while to recall that a consensus is not unanimity. Consensus is the present group mind. There is always a consensus, whether that consensus is agreement, divisiveness or mutual hate. Some of these are more useful than others. You will teach yourself to influence and develop the most useful group dynamic that you and they are able. Notice the language. If you are the manager, it's "influence and develop", not "make happen". It is a mutual process within the dynamic. The simple action of defining an agreeable statement within a disagreement stimulates and sustains an open and flexible dynamic.

Discussion can continue until there is a unanimity upon which action can be based. When a group is just beginning this process will be clumsy and slow. Gradually managers and team members will discover the great power they have in a consensual decision making system. Action can be taken when those who hold another opinion agree to the action so the group can move forward. Notable observations have been made concerning the minorities overridden by a vote. Obstructions never stop. This is usually obviated by the consensual process. The consensual organization becomes mutually supportive and friendly.

An element that most organizations using this type of process will adopt is to record all opinions not included in the action, with the names of the promoters, for use at a later time. They can be put into a data base and carefully indexed. They may be the saving action when the next change takes place, or the next problem is faced. This also increases the mutuality of the organization.

Making agreements out of disagreement is a simple step towards creating a dynamic which will move the work in a unit forward with an increased measure of mutuality and support. It defines and then stimulates the dynamic. It is disarmingly simple while powerful in its results.

There is probably nothing more exciting than sinking your teeth into a good, heated debate. At least for some people. It will be somewhere between suspicious and outrageously unpatriotic to agree that such behavior has no place in modern management. The ability to be flexible and to not only listen well to a former "opponent", but to become able to hold and represent her position, seems desolate to some. The sad news is that a "heated" argument is, by definition, a restimulation of childhood issues. The arguers are using some differences of opinion to indulge their need to resolve a parent-child or sibling issue from long ago, one which cannot (by definition, they are permanently recorded with one outcome, permanently) be resolved. That's okay if yours is a therapeutic community, but if it isn't, you need to find ways to exclude or eliminate these roadblocks.

The "juiciness" of a good debate will motivate many to thwart the efforts of others to dislodge such childhood experiences and get on with business. It's difficult to avoid engaging our own childhood struggles with theirs. They desperately need to win (but their childhood will still be recorded as having lost!). Probably, in your business setting they are winning. And the company is losing.

Removing Roadblocks is just that. There is business to attend to and there is a disagreement as to how to proceed. In the resulting argument there are two important elements. There is the genuine difference of opinion concerning the facts and their interpretation. In addition, there are all those restimulated behaviors from childhood that are being brought into play by what is being argued and how. In Removing Roadblocks you will learn some techniques which will separate those childhood (and some other) issues from the differences and disagreements at hand. Very simple. Profoundly difficult. Probably the most difficult is how you will communicate your point of view without challenging or stimulating one of the other person's issues. To do this you will learn to master some new forms of behavior which make sense in another paradigm, and probably do not make sense in the culture in which you were bred.

The most important countercultural behavior in your new repertoire is "reflective listening". This is hardest when you do not accept the statements of another. For example, his statement, "You are only opposing this because I suggested it" will be reflected by you, "You are angry (if anger has been expressed) that I said that merely to oppose you". You believe that this is not so. You first need to take the steps to clarify the communications you have just received. You need to make it possible for the other person to experience that you have listened to and have carefully considered his position. You turn on all your hearing abilities and then communicate to the other how you understand what he has said. Only after he has agreed that you are hearing accurately and considering actively will you take the opportunity to communicate how you see it differently. This can be done effectively with a one sided method. If both parties are trained in this process, a mutual model is more effective.

Reflective Listening is a powerful skill to learn. All you need to do is to rephrase the feelings and concerns which the other person has expressed in your own words and in such a way as to communicate that you are genuinely considering the content. After you learn this simple (and profoundly hard to do) behavior, you can learn to socialize it. Your response to being accused of just opposing the other person can be met by, "Perhaps you are right", but only if that is a possibility. No lying. It is easily discovered. Another socialized response might be, "My God! That would make me feel awful. Let's see if it is true". Here is a central part of the removal of road blocks. You will genuinely count the other person in. You will take that person's opinion seriously and join him or her in exploring the possibility that his perception is perfectly true. After all, if it is, that means that you are indulging one of your childhood issues unawarely. You need to discover that more than this other person does. If it is not true, that fact will soon become apparent to both of you. (After all, you are now exploring this accusation. That fact gives the lie to his perception.)

That's half of how it works. Giving information is the other half. As any good reporter knows, managing pieces of the truth is how to transmit any perception you wish from the simple facts at hand. From childhood we learned to not listen. Hence the need to reflective listen effectively. Your boss probably repeats your father's favorite, "You're not listening to me", by which he means that you are not doing what he said. It's not possible, of course, that you could have heard him clearly and then known that another course of action would be better. So much for Daddies and Managers. Now you are caught with the problems of simply giving information. That process, too, has been distorted and immersed deeply within group climate and in the meanings of behavior. In other words, it's not likely that you can give information without stimulating all sorts of elements in the dynamics of the group.

Experiment. Start by looking across the room. Imagine how the room looks from over there. Things might feel different. Now say to the person opposite you, "I would like to sit where you are sitting". As you contemplate that, or as you say it, a flow of astounding emotions and thoughts course through your head. Some you will understand as meanings, particularly interpersonal meanings, of the things you are saying. Some are social conditioning. Your brain begins to work overtime with reasons. Yes, reasons. The same is true for the listener. Even before the listener can really observe the statement, his mental system has begun defenses, which will result in responses such as, "Screw you" or "Of course". With one simple statement of fact, a quiet giving of information, you have stimulated some of that behavior which we all do in place of pleasant and productive behavior. Removing Roadblocks is the process of identifying and excluding behaviors from the past so that the real and present today issues can be seen, discussed and resolved, or, as may be more valuable, held for their creative power and continuing stimulating discussion.

Conflict is a source of change. Disagreement is a source of enrichment. Our purpose is to remove the roadblocks of misunderstanding and of childhood issues in order to get down to business. Actually preserving differences may be part of that business, but indulging childhood issues is not acceptable.

As you might have guessed, this section on Synergy is the integration and the summation of what you have been learning. As we have moved through the three Agreement Strategies you have had opportunity to develop a sense of what "dynamic thinking" can be, in contrast with linear thinking and also in contrast with creative thinking. Suppose you need to move a gallon of water from here to there. You wouldn't hesitate to use a container. Picking up pieces of water by hand and shaking them into the container at "there" wouldn't be very effective. So with the management of individuals by individuals. It's messy. It's ineffective. It's a waste of time. Of course, that won't stop most managers.

Synergy is the container, the dynamic, which holds both you and your organization. That's annoying to most people, who consider themselves adults, beyond having to be coddled and free of all containers. But it's a fact. You are held within a dynamic along with the others, and all will change or none will.

Synergy is a Greek word which means "together" "work". As simple and straight forward as a spinning gyroscope. Synergy appears to be a basic law of the universe. An atom is a synergy of subatomic particles (and NOT an orbiting mini solar system). It was called an atom because it behaves as though it is atom (indivisible). That's because of its synergy. The atom is composed of synergy and some almost incidental subatomic particles arranged in a specific synergy and held there by its remarkable forces. Likewise life. A cell has specific chemical makeup. But that's minor. The life is its synergy. Death suddenly permits the cell to fall apart, to be invaded and destroyed.

So turn on your dynamic thinking and hold the synergy in your thought. In this way you can hold your organizational unit. Actually hold it. Then you can explore how you might effect and then change the synergy. NOW you are thinking. If you change how the subatomic particles are held in the synergy of lead, you may be able to turn it into gold. Perhaps not. But this possibility is real when you look at the leaden unit you are dealing with. With a few simple skills you can turn it to gold. Did I say YOU can? No. You know better than that. You can have an effect, different effects. As you do, you can invite others who are held within the synergy to join you in making specific changes. Together, mutually, you can change the lead into gold. Sorry. I realize that will piss some people off. They think the boss ought to be boss, and the proper answer to jump is - etc. But that's how it is. You and some others can begin to effect specific change in the synergy. You all will do it mutually, by the action - reaction process. What you or any one individual in the dynamic does will effect all the rest. Learn to manage what you do with that in mind and notice its effects. Then you will all end up exactly where you want to be. Remember, this can be done by employees against the boss' will. It is a powerful tool.

Managing something that you can't see, that you think may not be "there", is certainly the height of foolishness. But, if by chance, "it" is "there", and if, by chance, it does indeed control your behavior and that of your workers, you had better come to know what synergy is and how to manage it.

It is useless to try to convince someone of something (see the meaning of behavior in Chapter 3). By now you have already experienced synergy and have it as a concept. You can hold it in your dynamic thinking. So I invite you to explore your own reality and see what you discover, and what it is. Remember that this is a paradigm shift. The concepts of "group climate" and "corporate culture" are not real for many people. These very forces hold employee behavior in their grip. Synergy is merely another way of saying the same thing, but on a more general level. As "together" "work" synergy has long been experienced as more than the sum of its parts, a basic impossibility to most people.

Get yourself into thinking and exploring synergy as a basic scientific principle of the universe. Explore the sun and its planets and moons as more than a bag of cosmic marbles. As a bag of marbles it would not be more than the sum of its parts, in any but a poetic way. However, when they swing in space in a dynamic balance of forces, there you have a synergy. The best way to move into the concept of synergy is by understanding dynamic. A fly wheel, whether in an automobile or a friction toy, contains the dynamic energy of more than one push of a piston or the friction of the floor. Then move a step further in your exploration of synergy. Take a gyroscope and stand it on its end. If it is not spinning you can topple it over easily. Spin it and you will observe mysterious motions as you push it to topple it. If you know the dynamics of a gyroscope, its strange movements will not be, to you, strange or mysterious. It has a life of its own. All dynamics do. Synergy, climate and culture each has a dynamic of its own, and if you wish to handle a gyroscope or a business unit effectively you must understand the dynamic and deal with it, not the dead and unmoving parts alone. You will think dynamically.

Let's take another step and look again at life itself, a living cell. There is no difference between the chemistry of a dead cell and of a living cell, other than that the various parts of the living cell are held in a dynamic we choose to call "life". Permit yourself to grasp that the life which just disappeared as you killed the cell is something real, substantial. It controls its parts in a complex web of interconnected dynamics, just as your business or unit is held by the dynamic of the people there. Managers are a part of the dynamic, not the controllers. That's hard for both manager and employee to grasp. ("Grasp"? Yes. We are exploring the concept so that we might form a new concept, one that reflects the reality with which we are dealing.)

Now, pick up a gold coin and feel its heft. Think of its value in human culture. Beside it hold a lead sinker of equal weight. Even if you are a fisherman, I bet you wouldn't trade the gold for an equal hunk of lead. Now, think synergy, with its life of its own. Think dynamically. Bring together what you know about chemistry and atomic physics. Notice, as you hold that gold and the equal weight of lead, that they are composed of exactly the same number of the same subatomic particles. The lead and the gold are identical (except for the synergy). Each lead atom and each gold atom is composed of electrons, neutrons and positrons. Absolutely the only difference is how those particles are held in the dynamic of each atom. So, if you still do not believe in synergy, here's a pound of lead to trade for your pound of gold.

The similarity of how gold, lead, life and the solar system are held each within its own synergy with how your organization is held in its synergy is exact. You can have some little effect on your organization by taking shots at the subatomic particles, your fellow employees. However, those shots will produce behavior which is unpredictable except from within the laws of the dynamic, the synergy. Recall the aberrant behavior of your spinning gyroscope and complicate it a million times, and there you have it. Good luck. Rather, get to understand the synergy that you are in with the other corporate employees and manage the synergy, not the individuals. You will quickly learn how to turn a lousy unit into excellence. You will learn how to turn lead into gold by understanding and managing synergy.

Synergy has a life of its own. This dynamic courses through all members of the unit. Most managers perceive themselves as outside. They are not. They are a part, and have an important effect on the dynamic. It's usually not the effect they would like to have. Using the PSFs, the effects of managers and of other individuals can be changed. So you have two vital facts about managing synergy before you: 1) You are inside it and controlled by it; 2) Synergy has a life of its own which holds your future within it.

Begin to notice the dynamics around you and begin to manage them. You will soon become adept at the process. Then, as you do this over time you will discover one other fact. You were a master of synergy by the time you were a few hours old. You even knew what you were doing as you manipulated your environment. By the time you were four your social conditioning required that you eliminate "synergy" as a concept. Since learning is indelible you can tap into what you already know.

Your biggest problem will be your disbelief. You don't really believe that synergy, group climate and corporate culture control anything or anybody. So, when you give up ordering people around like your father did, or guilting them around like your mom, you will feel like you are giving up any possible effect on your organization or unit. Stick with it until you discover that the reverse is true. You are there because you have skills and knowledge needed by the unit. Cut them loose and watch how you become more effective. Then take home a few gold coins.