Chapter 1. - The manager as alchemist

Chapter 2. - The Agreement Strategies

Chapter 3. - Extending Common Ground

Chapter 4. - Eliminating Roadblocks

Chapter 5. - Managing Synergy

Chapter 6. - Mutual Action

Chapter 7. - Epilogue

First we told you that the manager and anyone who wants to be on his or her crew must learn to think dynamically, to perceive and think in a completely new way. Your thinking itself will be in a different paradigm. Then we told you that the manager must be a behavioral scientist, that perhaps a management degree could help, but knowledge and skills as a behavioral scientist are essential. Well, now we are telling you that a manager must be an alchemist.

What's an alchemist? An alchemist is someone who takes a substance, like a lead sinker, and turns that substance into gold. I never met an alchemist. Schiavone in New Haven claims to be one. But he takes iron and turns it into gold by trading. That's not quite what we have in mind. As an alchemist, you will take a group of people, people that you might say have lead in their asses (as long as you always include yourself, because you are one of them), and you will turn those same people into gold. You will take a lousy department and turn yourselves (see how I sneaked that dynamic thinking in there) into an excellent department. And, what's more, you will all love it. But that's a given. If you don't enjoy it, it won't happen.

The alchemist's dream is to change lead into gold. A manager doesn't have very far to go. An atom of gold is composed of exactly the same subatomic particles as an atom of lead. The only difference between the lead and the gold is synergy, the dynamic among the different particles. Take some time to think about this. It will lead you into dynamic thinking if that's not a skill you already enjoy. It is an objective fact that a lead sinker contains exactly the same amount of the same substances as the identical weight of gold. It is also an objective fact that the only difference between the two substances is the synergy, the dynamic relationship in which the subatomic particles of each are held. Similarly, with occasional exception, the difference between a "golden" organization and a "leaden" one is the dynamic within which the people (remember always to include yourself) work. With the same people (again, with occasional exception) you can have a productive or a disrupted dynamic. The dynamic which we call the group climate or corporate culture holds the individuals within it and controls their behavior.

The manager's dream is to change the lead of inefficiency into the gold of excellence. A poorly functioning team can be composed of exactly the same human beings as an excellent team. The difference between lead and gold, between excellence and mediocrity, is the synergy, the dynamic among the different individuals. It is the dynamic, not the individual will or intent, that determines performance.

All employees, including managers, need to think of synergy as their controlling dynamic. People intend to act one way and end up, driven by unseen forces, behaving another way. Keep the concept of the dynamic in mind. Understand how synergy functions and how to change it. A manager deals with groups of individuals, not with individuals. If you have an individual performing poorly, a lecture to that person may elicit their intent to change and do well, but the dynamic of the group climate overrules their intent. Unawarely, the person does as the group demands. The synergy, the subliminal and irresistible power in groups and atoms, controls the individual. Think synergy and you will turn lead into gold. The manager can do this, and likewise the other individuals who think dynamically can effect the climate of the group.

Attempts to manage individuals fail to produce excellence. Managers lecture, threaten and manipulate workers to produce the behavior they want, and it fails. It's like screaming at a passing electron, which can't change it's orbit because of the dynamic of the atom. Think synergy. Think dynamically. Change the dynamic. A laser beam is produced by changing the dynamic of the electrons in a ruby rod. Think synergy and be an alchemist. Think synergy and you get action. Think dynamically and you get gold.

Group climate, the dynamic which makes your working unit lead or gold, controls the individuals in the group. It is an unaware mutual agreement among the group's members. Even military units respond to the same order differently, depending on the group climate. The group dynamic controls them unawarely. The climate, not the manger, rules. Group climate is changed by a mutual and unaware action-reaction process. This action-reaction process is the tool of the alchemist, the manager. It also resides in the hands of any group member who chooses to think this way. No change will take place until every person begins to think dynamically.

What the alchemist dreams of in gold the manager who manages the synergy (the dynamic of the group climate) is able to produce in group dynamics. Think synergy. Discover the nature of your group climate and where you stand within it. Explore how your actions that violate the group climate produce group reaction. Carefully select actions which will produce the results you want. The climate you choose will develop mutually or it won't develop (remember it's dynamic). Then viola, you are an alchemist, and in great danger of having an increasing number of gold coins appear in your pocket.

The constant flow of degenerative forces threaten to disrupt the climate of any group. The degenerating process can be inhibited. The powerful flow of regenerating forces serve to sustain the accurate and productive purposes of any group. These forces can be cultivated within the ebb and flow of the dynamics of the group culture. All individuals in a group have a hand in managing these forces. The magic of alchemy rests in the skills and knowledge required for the regenerating process.

There are three Agreement Strategies.

1. Establishing Common Ground. Establishing, extending and maintaining common ground, including as common ground the agreement as to how we disagree about something, provides a base from which to work.

2. Eliminating Roadblocks. Since most intense conflict is the result of learned personal or cultural responses, these can be removed with no loss of conviction, or of commitment to a given perspective or stand.

3. Managing Synergy. Synergy is the dynamic interplay of various forces. Celebrating differences, searching for and developing options of action or perception, and the cultivation and maintenance of creative conflict are synergistic.

The Agreement Strategies are formal methods through which agreement can be developed, and nurtured without sacrificing disagreement. They are designed to deal with conflict in human affairs by beginning within a framework of agreement.

Agreement is defined by a description of any situation in such a way as to include all formerly disagreeing parties and all disparate ideas. "We are at war and killing each other" can be an agreement between two warring enemies. "We agree that we disagree on the borders of our territories" might be another agreement.

Language, perception and thought process determine how we deal with the world around us. Reframing a disagreement in order to make it into an agreement does not change the reality of what we are describing and of the extent of the conflict or disagreement. Altering perceptions and thought, changing attitudes and shifting perspectives always produce significant effects on how we will proceed to deal with the differences. Conflict is maintained by emphasizing disagreement and retaining an adversary stance. We find that changing "conflict resolution" to "Removing Roadblocks" shifts the focus to open communication and leaves conflict far behind, even while real and important differences remain to be untangled, resolved or held for their stimulation and future use. Redefining disagreements is a way to disrupt the learned adversarial responses and to replace them with agreement. Even mere verbal agreement establishes a new stance which can be used to begin to resolve disagreements and turn them into agreements. When such a new stance is created, even about minor issues, the parties can then continue to build further agreements. Often conflicts can be used creatively to develop a new group climate.

Adversarial approaches to conflict and interpersonal or inter group issues usually result in compromise. Compromise is a settlement in which both (or all) sides give up something in order to achieve a peaceful settlement. Compromise produces a loss of some elements of worth to the organization as a whole in order to salve (not solve) a disagreement. The parties compromised may retain a strong sense of the adversarial relationship long after the settlement has been reached. The issues continue to tick away as a time bomb, waiting to explode into controversy again. The Agreement Strategies offer to all parties the opportunity to win. Through them and the group climate and personal stances which they create and sustain, all parties have the opportunity to have what they want in ways that they couldn't even imagine from the head set and stance of the conflict.

The Agreement Strategies require an understanding of how past learned responses (including even how we word the conflict), as well as our perceptions and how we frame the issues, function as roadblocks to inventive new resolutions to issues. Change and new approaches seem strange, and "strange and unfamiliar" is the enemy. Old learned responses die hard. In fact, they do not die at all. They just lie dormant during times of ease and peace to reappear during the stress of conflict. They remain ready to precipitate disaster until they can be technically unlearned, removed from the brain.

The Agreement Strategies are designed to begin with a solid base of agreement. With that as a platform the steps distill out the creative conflict from childhood learned combatant conflict. Recognizing the dynamic and creative aspects of disagreement and conflict is an agreement in itself. When you make it part of the group culture, such agreement leads easily and naturally to synergy. In this case, the synergy is a dynamic balance between the solid forces of agreement and the stimulating forces of differences. The Agreement Strategies produce a movement on the solid ground of the dynamic of the organization, through the tension of creative conflict to a new realm of lively balance. With this as a corporate culture, you will generate psycho social energy and motivation within the group dynamic which can produce high production, low error and pleasurable work conditions.

Using the Agreement Strategies requires specific knowledge and skills. These include: how the brain processes information, the indelibility of learning, interpersonal meaning of behavior, the gentle massage of culture, the ability to think dynamically about group process, the effects of stress on perception, thought and action, several types of listening, Giving Information, and a large measure of SELF confidence held in a grounded and centered stance (GCS). With the GCS you will more easily set aside your own feelings during upsets, and more easily remain open to any unpleasant information in your communications.

The Agreement Strategies will gradually force you to think dynamically. You will begin to notice how changes in the climate of a group are developed by the action-reaction process. A member explores something new, the group supports or excludes it and the climate either changes or becomes more solid against that behavior. This all happens unawarely, through the "life of its own" dynamic. It usually is quiet and unobserved (subliminal). Because it is a constant flow, the dynamic can turn decidedly degenerative, and disrupt the group considerably before anyone will notice it. The Agreement Strategies can be used to encourage a stronger regenerative flow of group process. The group dynamic will support both degenerating and regenerating processes simultaneously. You can observe them as you wish. You can also observe how groups have a natural tendency to support both differentiation and integration, and one may serve to move the group to another kind of imbalance. Like the cells and organs of your body which are differentiated from one another, group members are different. If all become alike, some functions and valuable assets are lost to the group. If integration fails, the different assets are lost to the group. Again, differentiation and integration are held in a dynamic balance. So are all the other group forces. You are learning to be skilled in using dynamic methods to manage group climate, through which you manage the individuals within the group, including yourself.

The first of the Agreement Strategies goes right to the point. It creates a group dynamic which will hold new attitudes. They, in turn, will cause the group members to begin to focus on group cohesion and mutual support, rather than divisiveness. It will replace adversarial stances with an expectation of agreement as a ground upon which to share and celebrate creative differences while conflict is still maintained. The strategy will encourage a new stance and attitude, one of focusing on agreement rather than disagreement. It enhances the individual ability (as well as the group climate pressure) to give up the control and let go of investment in the opinions and behavior of others. The strategy will stimulate individuals to learn to hold two opposed or conflicting opinions or ideas in their minds at the same time, and even to hold each as true. Using this strategy will extend and solidify the mutual base which offers a measure of security and trust from which disagreements and differences can be explored. The strategy provides a climate in which individuals can seek familiarity with the beliefs and wants of others in the group and learn to understand their point of view. It establishes a group dynamic in which even the quiet and retiring individual can easily share his or her valuable perception or idea.

The Strategy "Extending Common Ground" is designed to develop agreement while sustaining differences and creative conflict within the dynamic of the group.

The common ground of human community and organizations is agreement. The fact of an existing dynamic proclaims an agreement. Agreement includes language and concepts for communications, limits to behavior, assumptions about customs and rules for institutions. Organizations and societies exist through agreements.

In every human dynamic people move between agreement and conflict, and between change and static inertia. Societies and organizations adapt and thus persist through change by including differences and by sustaining conflict. Agreement and differences are integrated through and within the dynamic. In some ways they are its dynamic. Use "Establishing Common Ground" to create and clarify the common ground. Use that common ground to develop shared differences and disagreements, to display the differentiation of the group and at the same time integrate it.

People avoid conflict because it leads to violence and the fragmentation of groups and organizations. Others express their needs with conflict. Some groups of individuals conform down to the least detail through fear. They fail to have the flexibility to adapt. Groups, corporations and nations disintegrate from these antiquated attitudes towards conflict.

This synergy or balance of opposing forces holds the dynamic of a group. It effectively sustains differences and creative conflict in a solid ground of agreement. Such group climate or corporate culture produces excellence, efficiency and productivity. Consensus is rapidly identified and decisions can be made rapidly. Individuals are motivated by the synergy. Mutual and participatory action constantly flows. The Strategy "Extending Common Ground" leads directly to the strategy "Managing Synergy".

Groups, organizations, individuals and corporations appear to do what they always do, each continuing its past history, held in the dynamic it has established. Individuals, managers and employees alike, cannot make others do what they think the others should do. We can't make others behave against the group climate, no matter how rational that might appear to be, except for brief moments of attention.

As individuals embrace this celebration of differences they will change both individual attitude and group context. This will produce new and unexpected results. It turns impasse into previously unthinkable possibilities, resistance into pleasant experimentation with a new group culture.

The Strategy will build and extend differentiation and integration in your organization. The tool can be used by one person working alone or by two or more in the multiplied power and dynamic of mutual effort. They can be used by individuals at the lower end of a hierarchy, or by those at the top. In all cases, the individual who uses these strategies is dynamically a member of the group, whether defined as outside the group or not.

The process identifies agreements and establishes them as a dynamic of common ground. It describes disagreements in ways that can be agreed upon. This makes agreements out of disagreements, thus defining and extending the common ground.

These are suggested steps. Take them in whatever order works best for you.

1. Identify areas of agreement and describe or define them. This is a pleasant step. Do it with full appreciation and vivid images. Feelings and the perceptions they restimulate may give messages like "We have no basis of agreement" because childhood fight patterns require that we hate everything (including what we enjoy) about those with whom we disagree or are angry. Use of the Strategy demonstrates agreement. Proceed from there.

Beware of being absorbed into the cultural predisposition to focus on conflict first. This is so habitual that we may overlook the obvious, such as common language and common intent. Make these a solid common ground from which to proceed to the next step.

Write down the agreements as they are identified. This will keep them clear as further steps are taken to reinforce the common ground.

Select and use words and phrases which do not stimulate disagreement. Words like "always" or "never" invite us to disagree and to nit pick, a way to stimulate more conflict.

2. In areas of some agreement and some disagreement, clarify which are the areas of agreement. This requires clarity of perception and thinking. Restate disagreement in ways which identify areas of agreement. Perhaps a disagreement about the color of a room is really a disagreement about whether to paint or a conflict about the budget. Clarify carefully and adeptly. Improve your skills.

Develop lists of areas of agreement and areas of disagreement, and a list of undecided issues. Begin now to restate them and redefine them. Be creative.

Shift parts of the issues back and forth, and solidify agreements which you discover and which you agree can be moved to the common ground.

Be careful not to give away or surrender your own perceptions and opinions. They are valuable to the process and your organization relies upon you to hold them. Do remain open to change in perspective and identify new options which you can support.

3. Explore the areas of disagreement and make agreements out of them by stating how "We agree that these are our disagreements". Write down the history and results of this Step. Perceptions will change and what is written will help document the shifts in perception and opinion which take place.

This Step causes shifts in how people perceive the issues. Much disagreement is supported by restimulated early childhood interpersonal struggles. In childhood to lose was to be squashed and winning required destroying the positions of others. This Step affirms the opinions of others. It confronts childhood learning and the polarized debate training of later schooling by requiring a statement of agreement about the conflict.

Agreement about disagreement can cause fear or anxiety about the outcome. The future is at issue. There will be a dynamic determination of the outcome. It is out of your hands. For some people it is frightening that the ultimate determination of the issue will be mutual, something in which everyone will have a say. It will be out of your control and uncertain from your present perception. You may not trust yourself to have enough influence to produce an acceptable outcome. Others have learned not to trust that the group will let them be adequately represented in the outcome. One way or another, we all fear the results and automatically return to childhood defenses. The results of this Strategy violates so many of these childhood and culturally conditioned expectations that you will have trouble imagining what the outcome will be like. Use of this Strategy provides the experience that this social training in mistrust, especially mistrust of ourselves, does not have to prevail. We will come to guarantee our own input. We will learn to not have to dominate to be heard. We will learn to support the input of others. All of this will become automatic.

4. Creatively move among perceptions until you can adopt the points of view and represent the positions of those with whom you disagree. Having left behind the childhood polarization habits, it is time to explore other ways of looking at your own opinions and beliefs about the issues. Things look different from the other person's moccasins. Try them on. Understand that any two people observing the same event or scene from the same point of view will have different perceptions. With different viewpoints those perceptions can become a whole new paradigm. Identify and share how you would represent the other's position. Listen to how the other would identify yours.

Keep notes and increase the multiplicity of ways to view the issues. Continue to add agreements and disagreements to their lists.

Begin to value other opinions.

For your own ability to think dynamically, develop the skill of holding as true two mutually exclusive opinions or beliefs, George Orwell's Doublethink. You will notice that if you do this for a period of time the ideas will begin to change and shift all by themselves. From childhood we have all been subject to the fear that if we hold foreign beliefs, especially if we hold them as true, we might begin to believe the forbidden belief or opinion. Well, you can trust yourself not to be taken in. Use your discrimination and intelligence to clarify what you know and think. Enjoy new information. Delight in how it conflicts with and changes your previous opinion. See yourself as a human being who delights in being influenced by others as much as in influencing others. Become accustomed to this experience. Learn to delight in the new unfolding of opinion and possibilities.

These activities will permit you to experience conflicting and opposing opinions as held in a kind of dynamic. They will bother your mind. They will make you think, explore and observe openly. This dynamic of differences held by you as true is like the sun and Earth. They are held in the dynamic balance of forces and motions such as gravity and centrifugal forces. And that's the purpose of this Strategy.

With enough skill you will become able to represent the opinions and beliefs of others as well as they. This will improve how you relate and communicate. It also will provide you with an understanding of how to better communicate your own opinions to those individuals. Holding the opposing view will help you to raise questions both for it and against it.

This Step feels like a weakening of your own position, when perceived from the social conditioning that opposing opinions don't deserve even being heard. In contrast, it is a strengthening and extension of you personally and of your position in the conflict or disagreement. There is no way that it is a loss of any kind.

5. Investigate all aspects of the areas of disagreement. Conflicts which endure have hot spots. We avoid them. Seek out the hot spots. Use "Removing Roadblocks" when the intensity interferes with clarity. Mercilessly invade the areas you feel upset by. Deal with them.

Some people use the guideline, "If it feels uncomfortable, wade into it". Discomfort unawarely controls our behavior. What we avoid is usually the most important part of our disagreement. Discomfort can work like a metal detector. When it buzzes, dig for the treasure. Hold warmly the discomfort.

The areas of disagreement which remain hidden and persist can also stimulate your unaware childhood patterns. They can do that also for others, such as your opponents. You can threaten others by approaching those hidden areas. You can please them by avoiding the issues. More directly stated, the back corners of conflict are often used to manipulate other people. (I won't agree to money for that until you agree to money for this). Dig them out fast. Explore all areas of disagreement and describe how you agree that you disagree, to sustain them as creative conflict. List how you agree.

6. Mutually select and redefine those disagreements which can be placed in the category of "Creative Conflict". By now you have practice with deftly separating out agreement from disagreement. Look at the disagreements and begin to view them as creative conflict.

Step 4 describes the effects of holding in your mind two conflicting or mutually exclusive ideas as true. Creative conflict functions the same way. Step 6 defines that you and the others in the conflict support and hold as true as a group (not necessarily as individuals) specific conflicting or contradictory opinions or perspectives.

One of the reasons that we have learned to avoid this practice is that ideas held mutually as acceptable in a creative conflict are likely to generate, all by themselves, new perspectives. Here is that dynamic, the synergy, again, with a life and power of its own. This violates the "logic" with which we have been trained and leads us to unpredictable conclusions, actions and possibilities outside of our experience, expectations and control, a frightening prospect. Individuals in this society have been trained to fear and avoid such creative and unpredictable adventures. The new individual attitude and the new group context generated by "Extending Common Ground" is delight in the unexpected, appreciation for the unfolding of new possibilities, and adventurous exploration of the unknown.

Identify the creative conflicts that are related to this disagreement and develop a list describing them. Make friends with new and opposing opinions. The writing itself will help sustain creative conflict.

7. Identify conflicts and disagreements which are perceived to threaten the organization or group and make similar agreements around these. As your skills increase, notice disagreements which threaten the basic fabric of the organization. Some possibilities violate the purposes of the group or corporation. At first all disagreement is experienced as destructive to the group. Now you have the skill to identify what is contrary to the purpose of the organization or to the intent of the various individuals involved. Begin to identify which conflicts are destructive and which are creative and stimulating. You may need to consider enlarging the frontiers of your department or even of the corporation!

Take this step with care. Understand that stress will destroy your accuracy of perception. Do not trust your judgment in this matter when you are upset. Wait until you are clear.

Carefully weigh whether to sustain intentions which are so divergent that they undermine the organization or unit. Consider as options methods to separate the differences into organizations with different purposes and options which agreeably exclude these areas of conflict and disagreement from consideration.

8. Create and invent concrete new options. With the ability to use creative and expansive thinking, new options will start to flow. The mind has a flexible and inventive capacity which is narrowed by stress and restricted by restimulated behavior patterns. Your thinking is conformed to the thinking required by the society in which you were trained. Unless you learn to think laterally and dynamically you can only reproduce the past. As you open to new thought forms and new options, you will invent the future.

Brainstorming requires ease, relaxation and protection from the interference of stress. We increase stress levels to concentrate. Our focus narrows and our thinking becomes more disciplined. Stress will narrow our thinking without our knowing it. To create and invent we need maximum use of our Aware Function, that part of our thinking mechanism which manages information flexibly. Be foolish. Risk the absurd. Then notice how you may have invented the very perspective or idea which incorporates both your own concerns and those of the people with whom you are in disagreement. Expect that options can be generated which satisfy all the divergent parties in a disagreement, one hundred percent. This will happen more often than not.

9. Return to #1 and proceed again through #7, adding new areas of common ground and support for creative disagreement. Continue to use the process. It is an endless learning experience in which the unexpected continues to happen. It is dynamic and supports continuous change. When you return to earlier steps and do them again, your perceptions about the disagreements and conflict will be different. The outcome will produce more new perspectives. By entering the Strategy you have opened a gold mine of human thought and mutual creativity.

Continue to use the steps and change the lists of agreements and disagreements. Enlarge the areas of creative conflict and delight in the multiplied creativity and awareness of divergent minds working at greater than usual capacity and in concert with one another. You have created a new world.

Effective communications enables groups to generate agreement and explore differences. We are motivated to communicate because of our differences. In a cyclical dynamic, agreement is required to establish communications and communications is required to communicate disagreement. This synergy of agreement and conflict comprises the culture of a society or a corporation.

The Strategy "Extending Common Ground" produces Synergy. Synergy is a dynamic of differences held together in a unity. The solar system is one and life itself is another. Matter which is alive is held in a special dynamic, a synergy. You are establishing a special synergy. You are creating a group climate, a corporate culture. In this synergy both security and change are assured.

Removing Roadblocks is a powerful strategy for human communications. It is used to assure that messages are accurately heard as intended by the originator of the information, and to identify that the concerns expressed are being thoughtfully considered by the recipient, not just heard and thoughtlessly or purposely ignored.

Office and factory communications are notably bad. Various sorts of efforts and kinds of training are used to improve them. Computers use various technologies of reliable communications to connect and then transfer information to another computer. A reliable connection guarantees absolutely accurate reception of data. Both the receiving and transmitting systems play significant roles in assuring successful delivery of that information.

When the benefits of reliable communications are lost, misunderstanding escalates into disagreement and disruption of the organization. People become isolated from each other when there is interference with messages and how they are heard.

At the start of the process, be aware of the stance you are using, its effects on others and whether it will be effective. If you are sitting, open your legs and arms. Become defenseless. Over time you will develop attitudes which can work to permit the strategy to bring about what it is designed to do. Think dynamically. Notice how your stance will stimulate stances in others. Model openness. This will begin to establish a stance of openness in others. Rehearse and hold your Grounded and Centered Stance as a starting place. Go slowly as you move forward so that you can monitor how you are doing and what the reactions of others are to your presence and attitudes. Watch for early childhood protective reactions in yourself and others. Take steps to ease the process so that everyone can remain in the present and deal clearly with the agreements and differences.

Constantly search for things in opposing positions which you can accept. Show everyone that you are doing that. Help them experience that you understand their concerns. Invite them to produce new options or perceptions, new agreements. This is disarming, inviting others to put down their arms and seek accurate communications. The outcome will be extended agreement and creative conflicts which you will come to value.

Take every opportunity to communicate clearly, without the static and interference of your own distress. Your own positions on the issues, your wants and opinions, your perceived need to protect yourself and destroy the others, whatever you usually bring to conflict and disagreement, learn to set it aside and determine to press at a later time such of those as may be valuable to the purposes of the group. Removing Roadblocks is neither a way to "wimp out" nor a way to change others. It is a powerful method through which you can clear communications so that your opinions will be heard and valued by others and theirs by you. Give everyone the opportunity to understand you. You will discover that people will resist when they think you are ramming something down their throats. Put it out there clearly and let them pick it up if and when they choose.

To use Removing Roadblocks effectively you need to have immediately available to you some simple and vital knowledge. Chiefly, bring to your awareness what you know about how the past, and especially childhood, is restimulated by differences, disagreements and conflict. This will be true for you and for others who may be using the strategy. Expect these early learned response and reaction patterns. Find ways to lay them aside. In groups which have experienced this material you can identify them in yourself, communicate about them and laugh at them. In even more advanced groups, nothing need be said and they are smiled at as they appear and pass by. At the start they will press in on you and others to disrupt the strategy.

The Strategy requires three potent skills with which you are already familiar. They are reflective listening, giving information and I statements. Part of why these behaviors are effective is because they confront the socialization which trained us for conflict in this society. The three skills are forms of information exchange which in themselves remove some of the roadblocks to accurate communications.

Reflective listening is the core of the strategy "Removing Roadblocks". Approach it with dynamic thinking. When another person says something to you, reflect back the entire content of the message in order to check whether the information you received is the information she meant to transmit. In reflective listening the reflection is not like a mirror, but in different words chosen by the listener after having thoughtfully considered the message. Using your own words communicates that you had to think about the message. It comes across as friendly and appreciative.

If you experience intense distress with the content of her message it will be necessary for you to take time away from the strategy. If you do not take the time, you become likely to add to or subtract from the communication in order to deal with your own feelings. Deal with your feelings another way first.

Giving information starts with describing only the observable information. Practice this as often as you can by observing "The chair is green. The table is brown. The sky is blue". Learn to hold a "so what" attitude. This stance will help you make statements of observable phenomena without your getting into the interpersonal meanings which are always attached. Those interpersonal meanings and other associated feelings and actions lead into the powerful dynamic of interpersonal conflict.

"I Statements" are a form of giving information which offers words about yourself. In most childhoods self revelation was dangerous. Others took advantage of us when we shared too much. We learned to conceal and to be devious. Making I statements can seem dangerous and feel frightening. Be prepared for this feeling and don't confuse it with reality. Do not reveal information which can be used to your disadvantage. Train yourself to use I statements regardless of the feelings, but with careful regard for the realities around you. Hold a physically open stance, such as legs and arms apart. It will help your I Statements to be genuine.

With these skills, Reflective Listening, Giving Information and I Statements you can establish a reliable connection whether the others join you in the process or not. Expect to hear things you didn't want to hear. Understand that "Removing Roadblocks" will not manipulate other people into doing what you want them to do. This is a new way to communicate which requires your own careful personal training. The Steps of Removing Roadblocks will establish a reliable connection. If that's what you want, use the Strategy.

Assure these four elements in your use of removing the roadblocks to creative disagreement:

1. Each person must experience that the interaction is a genuine effort to involve him or her in producing the options, and not as an effort to control the outcome. The other person is being invited to have a great deal to do with the results, something which can frighten an insecure person seeking the clarification. This cannot be accomplished without your letting go.

2. The other person must experience that you understand her and her feelings, beliefs and concerns about the area of mutual interest. Keep your own interests for later. Separate them from your listening.

3. The other person must be given the opportunity to understand your feelings, beliefs and concerns. When you communicate openly you may feel exposed. Be sure to evaluate what makes sense to reveal so that you can allow yourself to feel exposed without exposing information which might damage you.

4. You must be willing to set aside for the time all of your own feelings and restimulated patterns for the sake of clarity. Work on them later.

The Steps are suggestions and the order can be changed to suit your own use.

1. Offer to include the other in Removing Roadblocks.

Begin immediately with I statements. Do not ask. Avoid questions like "would you like to do this" because they often are associated with meanings you don't want up at the moment. Questions of any kind are not used in Removing Roadblocks. State that you would like to deal with the differences and the roadblocks. Notice that such a statement permits the other to upset you by refusing, a part of the vulnerability of I statements. Do it this way regardless.

Suggest a time limit. Establish your own if there is no other reasonable opinion. Stick to the time.

Give information about the conflict as you see it. Continue to tentatively and slowly give information until you stimulate the others to respond. Now notice the concerns and feelings being expressed and consider them apart from your own emotions. Remember to set aside your feelings and deal with them outside of this activity.

Give the message you are listening to thorough and fair consideration. Request that it be repeated until you have digested the entire message. Remember to slow down the whole process so that it can be dealt with accurately. Use silence to carefully and thoughtfully consider what you are hearing. If necessary, use an I statement to give the information that you need smaller pieces of the concerns that are being expressed. Be friendly to the information. Treat it as precious, especially when it is threatening or upsetting to you. Consider it carefully until you believe that you understand it and are prepared to accurately communicate to others what you heard.

2. Use reflective listening with warmth and clarity so the other person experiences that his concerns have been heard accurately and are being seriously and thoughtfully considered.

This is the core of "Removing Roadblocks". It simultaneously confirms the information received and communicates your own willingness to include the other person in resolving any conflict. The Step will clear up the lines of communication, resolve interpersonal struggles and identify and preserve creative conflict.

In the first Step you exposed yourself by speaking in a new and open way. You take that same open stance further as you genuinely embrace the opinions and concerns of others. Affirm within yourself all accusations against you, if any are made or implied. Explore open positions of your body. When you sit with your legs and arms apart, you are totally exposed to the others. Accept and seek to understand the feelings and emotions which are being expressed.

By reflecting accurately and warmly you are counting the others in. The power of this action, which may feel weak and vulnerable, is intense. By including them in the process you are demonstrating your own personal mastery and confidence. It challenges them to do the same.

Remember that you will have and will take the opportunity to respond to and deal with each point when you wish. Give yourself time and set your responses aside. Seek to thoroughly understand the communication in all of its vivid emotions and personal adversity. Then you are ready to give information back to the speaker which will convey what you heard in its entirety.

Now formulate a statement of the other person's concerns (and emotions when appropriate) which will be completely acceptable to the other. Allow them to experience the sort of thoughtful attention you gave to their communications as you reflect what you heard.

Use an I statement to stimulate them to respond to your restatement of their concerns. Do not use questions. Offer your openness to hearing accurately and state that you would like to hear the message again if your reflection is inaccurate in any detail.

When you reflect accurately you will hopefully observe a marked reduction in the distress of the others involved. That means that you have reduced the noise and interference on the communications line. You are establishing a reliable connection, over which accurate communications can take place and through which creative conflict can flourish.

3. After reflective listening has reduced the intensities the other person has about her areas of concern, express yourself clearly with "I statements" and with statements which give information supporting your point of view while clearly affirming differences of opinion.

Again recall that this Strategy is designed to clear up communications. You have taken a significant step to that end. Give information and make I statements which communicate your concerns, emotions (when appropriate), perceptions and opinions. Now that the reliable connection has been established you can reasonably expect that your position will have the best shot at being heard.

When you make an I Statement, notice your stance. Sit as before, with your legs apart and your arms open. Speak with an openness which feels exposed.

It will be useful to include in the act of giving information a description of any agreements that you are beginning to observe within the context of this disagreement and conflict. Describe agreements as in the Strategy "Extending Common Ground". Be sure to include agreements about your disagreements with clear statements about your opposing views.

You are in a dynamic. Notice the pressures on you and others. At this point in the Strategy determine to change your own opinion in any way that you can without giving away any of your own values or views. Model this for the others in the conflict. As you do this you will stimulate them to do the same thing. Change will begin to appear in the process.

4. As her stress level increases, return to Step #2.

The purpose of this Strategy is to establish a reliable connection through which reliable communications can occur. Since stress has increased, restrict your statements to those which will reflect the concerns of the other accurately. This will reduce the intensities the other is experiencing and open up the channels of communication again.

Communications are two way. Use reflective listening to clear the communications lines, then state your opinions and concerns clearly. Offer them. Be open and revealing in your presence, your communications and your stance. Do not attempt to force them. Let the others experience that you are genuinely inviting them to join you in removing the roadblocks.

5. Continue stating and exploring your perception of any disagreement. As distress rises in the other person respond with supportive reflective listening. As the distress goes down, give information again.

Continue to use warm and supportive reflective listening to reduce the stress and keep the channels open. Remain committed to hear all that concerns the others. Resist the urge to insert a zinger of your own. As you go back and forth between supportive listening and giving information you will notice that parts of your concerns are beginning to be noticed. They may even gradually become integrated into the positions of the others. Doubtless their concerns are beginning to become partly yours also.

Always keep in mind that it is possible that the others, for some reason, choose not to permit an agreement. Their purpose, either known and intentional or unknown and automatic, may be to personally oppose you and to use a conflict to do it.

If you are dealing with aware and purposeful opposition, your I statement will have the best shot at producing agreement because it opens you up to their observation. This may set aside their reason to defeat you. If you are dealing with unaware resistance, this Strategy is especially effective. "Removing Roadblocks" is designed to remove that roadblock by alternating between giving information and reflective listening. Their unaware opposition will become clear to them. "Removing Roadblocks" is a carefully designed win-win Strategy.

6. Initiate an options and alternatives search.

Explore options constantly as you use the Strategy. Remember them and put them out as you move to the giving information and I statement Steps. Practice exact timing. Let your position be known clearly. Let new options be experienced as movement to new mutual positions. This provides progress in the use of the Strategy for all to experience, as does your own adopting of some aspects of the positions of those who oppose you.

When you all have agreed to a statement of differences, as in Extending Common Ground, and the intensities are resolved, make an I statement which invites the others to join you in a search for more new options. State that you would like to use methods which will expand everyone's thinking, like brainstorming. Suggest the possibility of making excessively wild propositions. Describe how all together can explore the positions and opinions of others to find new options.

When you enter the domain of the opinion of someone with whom you do not agree you will hold that position differently than they do. That difference will provide options which couldn't have been perceived before you "stood in the other's moccasins".

If you do not reach agreement about your differences within the time to which you agreed at the outset, make a statement that you would like to leave off the negotiations and take them up at another time. Make statements of appreciation about all that you can honestly appreciate, including how doggedly, loyally or persistently your opponents are holding to opinions which you dislike, or how courageous they were to face you, or generous to give of their time. Learn to enjoy what you can about people who oppose you. It is the strongest position you can hold.

Be sure to set up another time.

As soon as there is any interest expressed in the Strategy, share information about it. If the interest continues, let them in on everything. Invite them to use the Mutual Model with you. Tell them that this work requires specific skills and offer to help them develop the skills they may not have. Begin to make all these skills part of the group process.

Whenever, in your opinion, it would be effective, shift to one of the other two strategies, "Extending Common Ground" or "Managing Synergy", do so. This Strategy, "Removing Roadblocks" is designed primarily to remove roadblocks such as emotional intensity and restimulation of old learning. Expect results. It resolves conflict, identifies and supports creative conflict, and establishes a reliable connection.

To briefly recap how it works: Give information about your areas of concern. Make "I statements" which reveal information about yourself. As the other person reacts with distress, switch to reflective listening until the distress subsides and he indicates that he has experienced being understood. Then begin giving information again.

Hold these attitudes; Go slowly, listen and think a lot, Assure that all parties experience that they are genuinely involved in producing new options or agreement, Determine to give evidence that they are understood, Determine that they will be given the opportunity to understand you and Be willing to set aside your own feelings.

Removing Roadblocks (Mutual Model)

As your unit develops a more intentional mutual dynamic, you will find that all parties in a conflict will be able to use the Removing Roadblocks material. Two people can be more effective at removing the roadblocks to clear communication and to make and extend agreement than one working alone. The Removing Roadblocks Strategy in its mutual model offers an opportunity to surface feelings and patterns around a disagreement lest they remain to cause later disruption. It is a mutual process, with the participants equal in opportunity to express themselves, clarify feelings and concerns. It ensures that the messages will be heard caringly, received accurately, and considered thoughtfully.

1. Initiate the process with an "I" statement. Own your feelings and avoid ascribing them to the other as in "You make me feel". Avoid questions and accusations. They usually lead right back to conflict. State your interest in using the Strategy. Agree on who will start.

2. The speaker states feelings and concerns. The focus is on the content of feelings, beliefs and concerns, not on the arguments and defenses that conflicting behavior patterns will create. The quantity of communication needs to be small, so that it can be remembered and reflected easily.

3. The listener is attentive to the content of feelings and concerns, really hearing and caring, while setting aside rebuttals and reactions. The listener paraphrases the speaker's feelings and concerns as they were heard, and the speaker takes the time to clarify the listener's restatement where it was inaccurate. The listener continues to thoughtfully reflect the feelings and concerns until the speaker thinks he or she has accurately expressed them, and that the listener has accurately heard them.

4. Switch roles. Resume 2 and 3, now with the original listener speaking his or her feelings and concerns, and the other reflecting them. The roles are switched every ten minutes, unless there is mutual agreement that it is unnecessary. The ten minute switch is to allow the listener to express feelings which might otherwise build up and disrupt the listening process.

5. Explore and invent options. When exploring alternatives brings up feelings, return to Step 2, above. Take steps to develop the interpersonal or group dynamic which you want.

6. Limit the process to an agreed time of an hour or so. Table the process until a later agreed upon time and follow with further work to resolve the conflict. Identify and define areas of agreement.

You have created and can sustain a powerful mutual synergy. This will work for you as your unit functions as a living whole.

I looked, as always, with awe and admiration at Mount Moran, one of the solid giants of the Grand Tetons. It towers over Jackson Lake, lending its reflection to the rippling waters. Skillet Glacier shines white on its face, its ancient ice and snow sparkling in the sunlit landscape.

I enjoy the imposing splendor of this giant. I read its face, which bears with honor the years of torment through which it has endured. My mind can't help but imagine the stone of which it is composed. I am pleased by the delicate crystals which survive, no, thrive, within the crushing powers of mountain building. "How can they survive?" I ask. "By synergy", I respond.

There before me I am observing this Goliath of enormous weight pressing down, pressing down on - - - what? Pressing down on tiny, delicate atoms which are mostly empty space. Pressing down on unimaginable numbers of tiny balloons which are supporting its weight. Balloons filled with, filled with nothing. Emptiness. "What is the force, the awful power, that holds it up?" my mind asks.

"Synergy", it answers. Synergy. Actually, without it Mount Moran would collapse. It would concentrate all its enormity and weight into a piece of matter about the size of a snow ball, and so heavy that it would thrust aside all other material as it penetrated its way to the center of Planet Earth.

Synergy is the balanced interaction among the various particles which together make up the atom. Social conditioning makes us concentrate on the particles as something, and the dynamic in which the particles are held as nothing. Of course, the reverse is true. The particles are negligible, but what their dynamic balance describes is the something we call matter.

Synergy is a law of nature, and it is found everywhere. It is the solar system, it is the dynamic which holds particles of substance together in a dynamic we call life, and it is the dynamic which holds groups and nations together in human synergy. Synergy is a balanced interaction among any number of units having different characteristics or natures whose dynamic describes and defines an existence of another order. Synergy means "combined energy". It is a basic characteristic of the universe in which we live, the physical, the living and the mental.

The people in your organization are held together in a synergy. The synergy, the corporate culture, is more powerful than any one individual. You have already thought about containerized shipping, and how the people in the various units of your organization are held together as though in such a shipping container. You thought about the inefficiency of shipping ten thousand dolls separately as opposed to shipping them in one container. You have compared that to the inefficiency of dealing with people you manage or supervise one at a time, and the efficiency of dealing with them as a unit in the container called "group climate". Now let's examine the synergy of that climate more closely.

Just as Mount Moran is held up by the synergy of the subatomic particles, and just as Mount Moran would collapse into a piece of matter the size of a snowball if the synergy collapsed, so would your organization. If the human synergy dissolved, communications would cease, individuals would separate and all work would come to an end. Your organization exists through the dynamic of the individuals within it. That dynamic is far more than a collection of individuals. Just as Mount Moran consists of quartz crystals (held in one distinct synergy) and feldspar crystals (exactly the same subatomic substances which are only differentiated by their synergy) along with muscovite (again, exactly the same substance, different synergy), themselves integrated into a substance called granite by yet another synergy. So in your organization, individuals (with several different and discreet synergies within themselves each synergized together into one dynamic whole person) are joined together by what is referred to as group climate or corporate culture. This is a synergy as rock hard as the granite of Mount Moran. This synergy controls the behavior, the productivity, errors, motivation and communication, of the individuals within it. This synergy holds and manages the differentiation and the integration upon which any organization exists. It is, of course, far more efficient to manage the synergy than to manage individuals. If you choose to manage in this efficient way, you and every individual in your organization will first learn to think dynamically.

Three questions need to be explored and evaluated before you can be expected to become the alchemist you will be.

Question: Who actually establishes the synergy? Answer: They do. Group climate, corporate culture and the other aspects of the group dynamic or synergy are always established by a dynamic human process which includes all people in the group acting mutually.

Question: Can individual escape the group dynamic, the requirements of group climate or corporate culture? Can they leak out of the container? Answer: Yes. But that's a very limited "Yes". One cold Saturday morning five boys went skinny dipping in a frigid quarry. Not one of them wanted to swim, but all five did. They had agreed to on a hot Friday afternoon, thereby setting up a synergy which contained them. An individual is restricted by the fact that his or her Aware Function, that capacity to think and act independently and awarely is only one one hundred thousandth of one percent of that same person's ability to think and act unawarely, automatically. Leaving the container, the power of the group climate, is very unlikely. As individuals begin to grow personally and become free (as a result, of course, of the Designed Change Process) they can use more of their Aware function to escape any behavior pattern that has controlled them, or those behaviors imposed by the synergy, the group culture. As you become an alchemist you will realize that you must share that power, so that with them you all will create your own synergy. Nobody will want to violate the synergy they have created themselves, especially as they learn that they can change it as they wish.

Question: Isn't this opening up to a whole lot of training? Answer: No. How much training did your parents have to do to teach you the customs of your family of origin, which you replicate today when you are upset? Synergy is so powerful that not only does it (almost) force the individual within to conform to its behavior, but it does the same with entry level people. They very quickly learn to live according to the group dynamic.

As an alchemist, think of your organization. It is composed of people, different people. They are integrated into a corporate dynamic. You and they can learn to alter that dynamic as you choose. The synergy is mutually developed.

One person plus one person and another relating in groups define a synergy. The individuals are held (subliminally) within the dynamic of the group. Synergy refers to a dynamic which actually produces more than the sum of the separate individuals. There is a larger existence as a result of the synergy which you are creating or sustaining. This existence has parameters defined by the individuals plus their dynamic. A synergy consists of its dynamics more that its parts. Completely new existence's are created through synergy. Synergy is a real force producing real new existence, and you, severally, at all levels, are managing it mutually. The results of synergy produce more than was there before the synergistic interaction, which makes synergy sound like some form of magic or some mystical act. It isn't. It is lawful and predictable. It produces new levels of existence which could not have been thought of from the lower level. It produces a level of productivity together with a level of pleasure that you will not be able to imagine. Or, perhaps you can!

To speed the process of leaving behind the more intense concerns from early childhood and social conditioning, begin to actively conspire with your unit to identify and disrupt the two most powerful areas of control by the past. Your increasingly efficient and productive organizational climate, which you and your people are creating and sustaining, will, from time to time, collide with both the parent-child-sibling struggles of early childhood and the ever-present cultural attitude towards work as unpleasant. These two simple classes of behaviors account for most of the nonproductive activities of all organizations. Take pieces of time to join with others to identify and clean up these behaviors. You will identify "work is unpleasant" in phrases like, "a well deserved vacation" and "thank God it's Friday". Parent-child-sibling struggles are identified by "should", "blame", "try", "can't", "fair" and "fault". Group and unit members can begin to identify these behaviors at staff meetings. The tactics you use to do this will be very important. Do not call other people on these phrases and behaviors. You understand the effects of the interpersonal meanings of doing that. First catch yourself at it and share that with others. Model this for the unit. State that it is important for everyone to learn to do this. You might, briefly, at staff meetings, have people share what they caught in themselves. See whether they can identify what these phrases caused in the group dynamic. Think dynamically, and describe that to others. Follow the effects of the interpersonal meanings of these phrases and actions, as they stimulate childhood issues and behaviors in others. Notice that it takes very little behavior of the parent-child-sibling kind, or the work-is-unpleasant kind to start a chain reaction of other similar behaviors, with powerful and disruptive results. These two categories of behavior are poisonous to your organization and its productivity. They collude to form powerful degenerative forces in your organization.

Doing such things as just described, you will jointly establish a group climate in which individuals will begin to tag their own behaviors with increasing humor. This is the next step, and the valuable one. The humor will begin to disrupt this kind of behavior. You might have brief contests, all standing on chairs and pointing parental fingers at each other, shouting parental shoulds, the more ridiculous the better. Give a prize for the most humorous. Do the same with other roles, such as brothers and sisters and how it's not fair, and explore the child and how you can't, won't and please help me. Do it kneeling on the floor in supplication and helplessness and see whose guilt you can stimulate. See who can come up with the most exciting "poor me". Avoid like the plague any criticism of others.

As you do these exercises you will find that they become attached to your real childhood behaviors. Now every time you start a parental admonition or a child resistance, you will find yourself laughing. You have installed a patch on the computer program of your childhood. Childhood won't run without your permission any more. Don't rejoice yet! Now you will have to learn a whole new way to make the communication you started which the humor interrupted. It won't take you long.

As behavioral scientists, you and your colleagues in your unit will want to understand the changes you have made. You have changed the interpersonal meanings of these behaviors which used to block your work. You have made it a matter of pride to catch yourselves at it. You have laughed at what you found and thereby placed the interrupting computer patch on it. Now this material will no longer run to plague your organization and to interrupt or make painful the work you are doing.

By now you understand that you are caught in the synergy of your unit, and that as you persist in dealing with it, you will gradually be caught in a synergy of your own creating. If you are not, you have no chance of effectively managing it. Now that you understand where you are, you can begin your career (actually, if you got this far, you are now furthering your career) as an alchemist. You are going to take that basic substance and sling it into the dynamic you choose. You will do that by enlisting the help of every person in the organization. You can now take the leaden behavior of your group and together with all employees, shift it to the golden dynamic of pleasurable and productive behavior.

In case you forgot, "kaizen" refers to continuous improvement. The word comes from two roots. The "kai" part refers to taking apart. You and your colleagues (that's the people who work for you, or with you) will have to do that to the synergy. You will need training and powerful commitment to take it apart. Remember, it has a life of its own, even though you individually sustain it. The "zen" refers to "good words". That means that the synergy, the corporate culture, will begin to become mutually supportive. Pissing and moaning, complaining and covering your ass will be unnecessary, a thing of the past. So work will either be more of the same, or it will become productive and pleasurable.

By now you often think dynamically, in systems. Recall some of the rules. For example, notice how if A causes B, then B will also cause A. When a distant executive faults your department for slowing down production he becomes associated with slowing down. Whatever he says is likely to further slow down production. Threats and disciplinary action will intensify this dynamic. If the organization itself begins to think dynamically and learns simple systems sequences like this, together you can change the dynamic and begin to raise your productivity in spite of his unhelpful input. Count every individual into the system.

In order to make alchemists of other individuals you can begin to help them notice how group dynamics work. Start with the millions of examples of the interpersonal meanings of behavior. Share examples of synergy. Right at the start you can point out that the synergy of a human group is supported by the balance and integration of differences just as the centrifugal and gravitational forces in the solar system produce a balance which keeps it from collapsing into a bag of cosmic marbles. This provides a basis for understanding that differences are vital to the organization, and they do not have to become sources of childhood responses, like envy, jealousy and mutual degradation. Rather, you can all become coconspirators to develop and support a kaizen type of corporate culture. Soon they will begin to delight in the many conflicting or opposing opinions which are characteristic of a group with vitality. That delight, like celebrating differences, actually creates and sustains synergy. You can observe a new group cohesion, probably in its own dynamic with disruption or differentiation.

Think up ways to call the attention of the group to dynamic or systems thinking. Examples abound. Joe shot Ed and killed him. What caused Ed's death? Get people to come up with as many answers as they can. Joe had a fight with his wife. His father shot his dog when he was a child. The hole killed Ed. The person who loaded the cartridge at Winchester. Ed ate sausages for breakfast and belched at a meeting and was reprimanded, so he took out his anger at Joe by yelling at him. Get your fledgling dynamic thinkers to come up with some feedback cycles. Ed yelled at his wife who raged at Joe's wife who made Joe miserable all night so Joe shot Ed. That's how it works at work.

Thinking about synergy requires a different way of thinking. Usual ways of thinking cannot contain those dynamic concepts. Since the human mind soaks up new learning like a sponge, you are all easily capable of learning this new thought system which can contain synergy. You will learn to use it as your organizational dynamic changes. You will understand how a synergy has a life of its own and rules of its own. It can even create new developments, products and options for you. You will notice how many productive results are independent of each individual in the organization. They are clearly a mutual product of the synergy. You will observe that many of those new options or inventions make no sense from the several original points of view of the people in the synergy.

When the members of a group wish to establish a new dynamic, one in which some new features such as highly pleasurable and highly productive work, it will be accomplished by the action-reaction process. Such changes are accomplished by mutually acting, by doing and then supporting the doing.

Some programmers in an information systems department found themselves embroiled in problems with how the unit was managed. Issues about software and equipment, jealousies around who got which job and upsets over how credit was given for various aspects of how the work was being done and by whom, these all interfered with the work the programmers were hired to do. Programming is an especially useful example of the effects of deflected attention on productivity. While routine work, such as that on an assembly line, requires very little of the limited aware capacity of the human brain, programming requires every bit. In fact, organizational issues such as these programmers were dealing with can use up all the aware attention that is available in the brain. On an assembly line, most behavior is automatic. It has been noted that organizational and labor issues can deflect the attention from the tedium of assembly line work, and actually improve productivity and accuracy. The aware attention, so necessary in activities like programming, can interfere with automatic responses. If you have experience with a restaurant, you will notice that it is likely to take longer to get your order when they are not busy, and quicker and more accurate when they are busy. You can also observe why. Watch waiters stand around discussing various matters when things are slow. Their Work Incongruent Stress is higher that their Work Congruent Stress. They will attend to the higher stress. As managers or workers at any level, remember that various types of behavior are useful for various purposes. In programming, the flexible, creative and aware behavior (of which we have little) is essential to that work.

Synergy can be used to manage the delicate creativity of the human mind (the Aware Function) without restricting it. Corporate culture can be changed and nurtured by accurately interacting with the synergy. Programmers use almost all their aware capacity for work. Any that is turned aside for struggles around interpersonal or organizational issues must be taken away from the job, and become a loss to the company. Obviously programmers need a peaceful, well functioning organization within which to work. This group of programmers found a way to conspire with their manager to create and sustain a group climate they could rely upon to support them and integrate their functions. They began to enjoy the automatic programming of the group dynamic, and mutually sculpted it to fit their own needs. Their growing trust in this process permitted them to attend to their work in a safe environment while the powerful synergy sustained the culture they created.

In a synergy, all parties are involved in all aspects of the group process. It is not possible for one person in the dynamic to make an error alone. Fault and blame, those haunting, intense and divisive childhood shadows, do not exist. You will experience and delight in how holding two or more contradictory thoughts in the individual mind or in the dynamic of your group at the same time is a productive synergistic dynamic. Keep the dynamic thinking alive as an aware game until it becomes a natural (learned) skill. Here are a few ways, in addition to those we considered above.

Have people exercise their ability to hold and nurture views or beliefs which are opposed to one another or opposed to their belief system. Then do the same mutually by holding differences of point of view, opinion, beliefs or values in collusion with others. Actively use these differences to create new options and inventions. Actively celebrate the differences you have with others because that simple act (a united celebration of variety) is, in itself, a visible synergy in which the parts sustain one another in a dynamic balance. Do it often to make it part of your kaizen, your change value within the synergy.

Don't neglect your earlier experience with making agreements out of disagreements. This can be experienced in a group as a visible synergy. You can use this with celebrating differences to develop and establish a creative and flexible synergy, one which is less resistant to change because change has become a value in the group climate, the synergy. The simple concept of the celebration of differences is, in itself, a synergistic activity. The celebration describes and defines the organization in a specific and ongoing active dynamic, a celebration. Because differences are being celebrated, the dynamic integrates the multitude and adds to each individual the differences of all the others. Let both your own ideas and those of others which may directly oppose yours ferment inside your mind and within the life of the group until they produce new options and opinions.

Organizations of any complexity at all must sustain both differentiation of personnel and, in a living dynamic (that's a euphemism for "synergy") the integration of these differences. Explore with your organization how they are differentiatiated from one another. Then explore how they are integrated. Explore ways the integration fails or how the differentiation is not enough, or too much. Require that you and the others use and hold dynamic concepts. Differentiation of the functions, skills and knowledge required to perform a task are joined by the process of integrating them into a functioning whole. Differentiation and integration provide the dynamic through which an organization performs its purpose. This becomes an efficient group process which maintains a specific and useful synergy. Through dynamic thinking the individuals in an organization are able to interlink and produce multiplied efficiency with almost no effort and lots of pleasure. Synergy gives you the ability to freely integrate the computers which are the brains of each individual. Watching the result motivates more of the same, and the dynamic is off and running on its own dynamic inertia.

Managing Synergy turns impasse into previously unthinkable possibilities. It implements the kinds of agreement and conflict which nourish an organization which supports pleasure in work and proud productivity. Repeat what works for you and build beneficial patterns.

You have been part of creating, extending and sustaining a new synergy. You have already taken mutual action. Your group, unit or team has already made the first major step toward change, they have significantly changed how they think. Some of you will, by now, feel at home with dynamic thinking. They will be using it in other settings. They have observed how it produces results. Especially they will have been using the strategy Extending Common Ground. Within this context, mutual action is a cinch.

The process of group action has been tagged with various names. Among them are participatory decision making, consensual decision making and decision by consensus. Each identifies an aspect of the process. Most descriptions identify consensus as unanimity, and few acknowledge that all group action is mutual, in spite of any hierarchical structure.

Reasons for consensual decision making include that it is more democratic and representative, that it involves people who will be working on the action which results, and that it provides more variety of expertise and perspective than voting. Beware of the "more democratic" statement. Consensual decision making can put all the power in the hands of a single obstructive group or individual. The team may need to adopt a formal process which can be referred to when the forward movement breaks down. That process may need a fail safe decision making process in which the decision and order for action goes to an executive group of the team or to another unit altogether.

Consensus can be managed in such a way that all the concerns and perceptions of each individual can be considered in the process. There is an increasing need in business, government and complex technology to stimulate and sustain for group advantage the observations and opinions of all concerned individuals.

The purpose of Mutual Action (mutual decision making) is to lay out clear methods through which maximum input and involvement from all individuals can be included while maintaining an understandable and orderly group decision making and action producing process. It includes the dynamic of group process or synergy, along with methods of assuring maximum individual input.

Mutual decision making is a natural flow from the dynamic thinking that has been the subject of this book. Group action, regardless of its name, assures that maximum thought and input is included in the action. It also assures maximum satisfaction for the members, thus securing their support for the decision or action.

Involve as many minds, perceptions and opinions as possible. The more ideas the more likely a group is to be able to quickly respond to a new situation. Learn to genuinely appreciate the ideas of others with whom you disagree. Creatively move among perceptions until you can adopt the points of view and represent the positions of those with whom you disagree. Sustain agreement about your disagreements.

Why not simply order an action? Why not vote? The faster change happens, the less informed the boss becomes. The person working on the line, either the telephone to provide service or the production line, cannot help but know more of what the customer wants, what the latest technology is and what the most recent process can be. Poor decisions can result when the whole group is not involved. Depending on the type of decision and the kind of team you have, some decisions can be only advisory. This must be communicated at the first, or the interpersonal meanings and the morale of the group will create a dynamic which will cost heavily if a supposed decision turns out to be advisory, and then is rejected. Offering a vote to a team is deadly. Voting stimulates old patterns of behavior. It invites power plays, collusions and territorial games. These and the act of voting itself narrows the thinking, usually restricting it to the areas defined by the Two Sides, and further restricting thinking to the side that is Yours. Furthermore, while mutual action practically guarantees the support of the group for the action taken, voting assures divisiveness in the group and resentful resistance to implementing the decision.

It has been said that mutual decision making takes a long time while voted or hierarchical decisions produce quick action. This is not necessarily accurate. Some top teams have produced instant and informed action. Skunk works, the garage based beginnings of such organizations as Apple computers, are notably fast acting. Observers also report that while a vote or an order may produce a quick decision, more time overall is lost through the resistance and ill will of the losers of the vote or objectors to the order. In support of mutual action is the fact that, just as learning to walk is a slow process, learning to act mutually in harmony takes time. Once it is learned, the process speeds up to whatever rate is useful.

In a setting of change the inclusive process of mutual action will provide a great resource of variety in thought, perception, knowledge, skills and opinion. This is essential for meeting the challenge of change, to develop new products, more efficient processes, more economical technologies. That, of course, is why you are using this material.

Quick and effective mutual action is your payoff. You expect this from transformation, ISO 9000, re engineering, kaizen and development. None of those work unless you have learned to think differently. Once your new system is in place, you will look at the waste of decision making systems which cause divisiveness, competition and ill will. You will wonder why anyone would choose to function that way. To make the use of mutual decision making process easier, here are some steps. After some experience, you can (mutually) build these into your own formal action process.

The steps are not designed to be taken in any particular order because the process is complex, cyclical and grows in all areas at once. In this dynamic, the steps will be useful at different times. Use them as they are effective.

Mutual Action

1. Know what you are about. Keep the organizational purpose in front of you. You must know what the charge of your team or unit is. Can you cross lines into other departments? What are all your boundary lines? What is the charge for this project? Are you making an advisory decision, or are you making an action decision? Notice and manage your level of investment.

2. Know what the project is. What is the purpose? What are the possible outcomes and the obstructions (cost, marketing, etc.). At this stage, avoid defining a proposal. Keep it open and stimulate its development over most of the time of the mutual action process. Imagine the impossibility of formally amending a proposal, as opposed to the natural process of adding to it, deleting and modifying as new perceptions and information are offered. Imagine the power plays which are stimulated by a formal proposal and who supports it, who opposes! Think of the narrowing of thinking caused by struggling with a proposal. Compare that with the opening out of thinking as a result of using one of the mutual methods.

3. Open out. Use brainstorming, laughter, foolishness, maximum lateral and creative thinking as you begin the project. Let imagination run rampant. Encourage fantasy. (Like, "I can see the product on the shelves. It's selling and bringing in the profits. How did we get it there?" Then make up stories about how it was done. See what you get.) Develop widely differing possibilities as well as impossibilities. Hold them all together as valid, true.

4. Narrow down. Reverse the process to stimulate new kinds of thinking. Prioritize (what criteria are you using) and select the top ten suggested possibilities. Set the rest aside, but preserve them. Permit narrow, logical thinking. Use linear and deductive methods to accept, reject, eliminate or support possibilities. Keep the imagination running at the same time. Take time to discuss the list you have. Combine any that belong together. Then prioritize and select the top five.

5. Thought crunching. Combine the top five possibilities into two. Be as creative and open as you can. This process is likely to do something to your thinking. It will do something different to the thinking of the others, as well. Then list the two agreed upon super proposals. (Do not take the actual proposals that result too seriously, but don't be surprised if something unthinkable comes out of this nonsense.) Discuss them or do a think, speak and listen round. Next, supercrunch the two into one overall statement. Avoid, if you can, having to use an "and" (as you do in Extending Common Ground). The supercrunch may be a meaningless statement. It can also suggest exactly what you want. The importance of this is that it has required different kinds of thinking, and likely even different kinds of thinking in each individual. Review the five, the two and the one. Decide any that remain useful and start a new list with them. You are back to step 3 again. When step 3 is finished the second time, add the ideas you dropped from the list in step 4, if they still seem useful. Repeat this sequence of opening out and narrowing down as long as it produces new ideas.

6. Develop the Proposal. Begin slowly to develop a statement or proposal which defines the action you hope to take. Begin to poll all members and insist on the quiet ones talking and the loud ones keeping silent. Use Extending Common Ground to begin this. Regularly review all opinions and ideas which are not yet included in the developing proposal to see where they may fit. Permit several proposals to develop. Begin to discuss which ideas need to be included (even when they do not yet seem to fit) and which need to be set aside in order to proceed. Do not set any aside unless everyone agrees. At the same time you are doing this, identify which are worth putting into a database for future actions (with the names of the creators and supporters), and which can be eliminated now. Keep taking appropriate action on each item, and then explore the proposals you have left. You can return to step 3 or use Extending Common Ground at any time. Depending on the nature of the decision or action, you can set it aside for later consideration, permitting further thought in separate and different settings. You may need research or the opinions of others (financial, engineering, marketing, etc.) not represented on the team. Take all the time you need. Do not waste time.

Notice and extinguish those thought patterns which exclude new thoughts and information. When the chair person asks whether there are any other concerns which are not represented in the proposal as it is being developed, you will hear noises in the back of your head, and probably through the skull walls of other heads, too, like "Shut up, everyone. This has taken long enough. Let's be done with it. After all this work, I hope nobody has another new idea." These old attitudes may cut out your own ideas, just the ones which would carry the day. Interrupt them. Speak them aloud and exaggerate, mock them. Encourage those other ideas inside yourself and others. Make limits only when that is necessary. If everyone is tired and wants to end the discussion-development of the proposal, take a break, as long a break as is necessary. Or do a marathon, working long and hard enough so that everyone becomes sleepy, unguarded and foolish. Then your new ideas may flow.

7. Taking Action.

In some ways, this step is like squeezing the last drop of resource out of yourself and your colleagues. You want to be sure that any information, perception or opinion that might improve your action will be drawn out of all members. Sometimes a lingering thought suggests another course, but that course seems, at the moment, not a useful one. Or, perhaps, it seems so different that it will destroy all your hard work so far, so protect the thought and yourself, and don't mention it. Cut loose these blocks to progress and change. When your thought is presented, a new direction begins. All group members will help in framing the final proposal and in collecting information from the reluctant. "It just didn't seem like what everyone was wanting" is a typical block. Say it anyway and enjoy what happens.

If there is a real deadline, this needs to be stated. Then all can agree to not introduce new ideas. Individuals can see that new ideas are archived for the future or the next revision. The clerk needs to begin to report the sense of the meeting, the changes in the proposal which seem to have been happening. The chair will begin to poll each member. If the chair suspects that some of the discussion has closed down some individuals, then the chair will hold a think, talk and listen round, in which each person has the same amount of time, whether they choose to speak or not. They will begin with a statement such as, "I have no concerns which are not included in the proposal", or "ditto, except this one observation", or, "You have already heard my concerns which are not included. I wish to have them archived. I support that we accept this proposal as it is." The process can be interrupted and some of these minority opinions can be discussed and acted upon. The actions can include archiving the opinions, letting them die or entering them into the proposal. All must agree to the action on these items, but still it can be assent to the group taking an action that one or more think incomplete or unwise. Notice here the difference between consensus and unanimity.

It is often useful to refer the proposal to a committee, so that the whole team does not have to spend time it cannot spare. The committee can be charged with remodeling the proposal and returning it for action, or the charge can be to take the action after whatever consideration they need. The charge must be clear and acceptable to all members.

You can modify these steps, depending on what you are doing. In the developmental stage of, say, a new product, you can get more creativity by using the steps which use that thought type (step 3 especially). If you are in the productive stage, use the narrower thought forms. Alter how you use the Mutual Action process accordingly.

As you take an action, do not forget to assign responsibility for its implementation. Remember to archive all the minority opinions, unless you agree that one or another need not be saved.

The process will mellow with use, as it is learned. Above all, watch out for the voices in your head that wish to narrow the thought down in order to get on with business and do what "everyone knows we need to do". That will assure that no progress will occur.

Mutual action will begin to flow naturally out of the dynamic of the group. If you don't like what you are getting, change the synergy which produced the actions. Take steps to make the life of your organization what you want it to be.

The vision shifts. The alchemist leans over his hot table to make secret changes in his metals until he produces the gold he has sought. But not the manager. By now, she knows that she is within the brew herself. There can not be one alchemist, but as many as there are group members. All will be alchemists, or none.

I have a dream about the life form that is possible between and among human beings through the unbelievable power of human minds linked up with each other in a creative synergy.

This immense capacity is largely unused because of the intense automatic hooking of one pattern with another that characterizes human interaction in business and society at present. This kind of hooking is rigid, unchanging and resistant to interference. It consumes all the capacity of the minds involved. This unbelievable capacity can be made almost totally available through the unlearning process. The patch which you can install in your own mind can clear your mind of ancient and unwanted responses. Then that incredible capacity (it's about 3 billion bits per second input, which is managed in about twenty five billion ways in the same second) can be integrated and used for today's intended purposes. The possibilities are endless when we contemplate the power of synergistically interlocked minds creating and developing a common future together. The image goes on beyond imagination, as synergy always does. I know that day will come because it is too easy and too desirable to permit it to be neglected any longer. It will first come through business and industry, because they can no longer live with the cost of not doing this. There are few workplaces where "Why do these damn fools always act this way" is not the expected perception. That wasteful activity is also unpleasant. When happy workers engage in high production, nobody loses. That's not idealism, it's alchemy.

The dynamic of a human synergy is powerful. It controls and holds within itself the lives and actions of all individuals. It is impossible to manage or direct the behavior of one person held in the dynamic. It is only possible to manage the flow. All will respond at once or not at all. The synergy makes the group one.

A synergy has a life and laws of its own. When these are well handled by a total conspiracy of the members of the group, the dynamic becomes one of closely knit and integrated computer systems, the brains of the group members. Possibilities and ways to carry them out can flow in an endless stream as long as the channels are kept connected and clear.

If a group of programmers (whose work clearly is more damaged by these human flaws) are held in mutual conflict the intensities will prevent any useful work from being done. When they resolve their disruptions and then take steps to agree upon a group synergy to manage their department, they no longer have to concern themselves with issues. They can begin to function again as productive individuals and as an integrated whole. The synergy supports work beyond imagination, and it supports it with a delight and pleasantness that is equally beyond imagination.

As humans on one integrated planet, we share more in common and agree to more than is represented by all of our disagreements. In addition, it has long been known that our disagreements are the source of invention and human advance. Disagreement means multiplicity of concepts and resources. Some types of conflict reduce options and destroy ideas. Others open continually outward. You, as an alchemist, as a member of the group, can cultivate those you want.