NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/1410

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-09 | 22.3 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!hri.com!ukma!psuvax1!psuvm!auvm!MCIMAIL.COM!0004742580
From: [e-mail] (Dag Forssell)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: Question on Demo. Promoting PCT.
Message-ID: <30921109063403/[e-mail]>
Date: 9 Nov 92 06:34:00 GMT
Sender: "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <[e-mail]>
Lines: 473
Comments: Gated by [e-mail]

[From Dag Forssell (921108)]

The phenomenon of control:

While on the subject of promoting PCT, I would like to ask out loud: Have any
of the people who requested and received my tape and demonstration packet
looked at it? I have not heard a single pipsqueak. Did anyone read Ed's book?
Do you understand the phenomenon of control any different than before?

--------------------------------------------------
Renewed efforts: Christine and I feel as if we are on a higher plateau of
progress now. We are renewing our marketing efforts with a clearer sense of
what we offer. This next piece is part of that.

Here is a draft for a promotional paper on Purposeful Leadership and PCT.
Any comment will be appreciated. I am anxious to be correct in what I say,
and as gentle as possible while stating the case forcefully for PCT.

--------------------------------------------------
UNDERSTANDING A THEORY-BASED PROGRAM

       CONTENT:                                                   Page
       Theory, REALITY, training, scientific revolutions and PCT    1
       Who will pay attention?                                      6
       Who can understand?                                          6
       PCT applied in values, methodology and role play             7
       Some of what you will learn                                  9
       Relevance to work life                                       9
       Relevance to personal life                                   9


THEORY, REALITY, TRAINING, SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS AND PCT

Bertrand Russell, the famous British philosopher, is reputed to have said:

       There is nothing as practical as a good theory.

In the engineering and physical sciences, this is obvious. Engineers and
physical scientists recognize that a tested theory allows for the prediction
of performance long before actual experiment or production. Good theories
have allowed us to travel, communicate, understand and produce better than
ever before.

The power and practicality of a good theory is awesome. It also provides
clarity.

When it comes to the important area of human affairs, this is not quite so
obvious. Many theories have been offered over the years, attempting to
explain human action, but none have measured up. This is why many
psychologists say that their theories and practices have nothing to do with
each other.

Since the results have been poor, scientists have settled for descriptions
and statistical correlations between described phenomena. Explanations which
yield predictions with 99+% experimental confirmation have not been possible
and are not expected. Levels of explanation and proof required for
publication are orders of magnitude lower than in the engineering sciences.

Some say this is because humans are too complicated. Could it be that the
concepts have been inadequate? As we shall see, the history of science is
full of phenomena that were considered mysterious and too complicated until
an appropriate concept was offered.

Let us distinguish between the objective physical REALITY of the world, and
any one person's subjective interpretation of it: personal reality.

       REALITY:      What actually exists (but can never be known).

       reality:      What a person sees, hears, touches and smells.

Personal, subjective reality is like a map of REALITY. The personal reality
is all a person can know. I think of reality as a heads-up display in a
fighter pilot's helmet, except it is internal to our own head. It is only a
display. REALITY is beyond our grasp, but we spend a lifetime trying to
understand it. As we do, the subjective map of reality is formed in the brain
and constitutes a personal world.

To a person who looks at a seamless world in living color and stereophonic
sound, this distinction may seem silly. Obviously, what we see, hear, touch
and smell is REAL, isn't it? Careful thought tells you that it cannot be.
Your senses may be well calibrated and yield a very good map of the physical
world, but a moments reflection tells you that it can only be a map. All you
know is an accumulation of interpretations of signals from nerve endings.
Today we know that there are many things in existence which we as humans can
not sense at all. Elephant-talk below 18 hertz, echo-location beyond 20,000
hertz, infrared light, X-rays; all are part of a long list of phenomena we
cannot sense. Clearly, our sense of the world is just that, sensed
perception, a display.

Consider how a person grows up and develops a personal understanding of how
the world "works" from personal experience, supplemented by experiences told
by others, seen on TV and read in books. (PCT suggests how). Each person
develops a unique framework of ideas, that personal reality which governs
that person's life. These personal ideas will vary. The quality of the
personal map reality will vary widely from person to person.

A personal map of high quality, a good reality, allows us to navigate
successfully in that elusive REALITY the map portrays. A good theory is a
good reality; a map of a specific aspect of REALITY, expressed as
description, explanation and perhaps a set of clear rules for prediction that
follow from the explanation. Many people can easily share the same good piece
of reality. This is why the power of a good theory is awesome.

Consider programs for leadership/management/teamwork training. They are based
on "what seems to work" - anecdotal experiences by the authors, experiences
from many sources and conclusions drawn by the authors. These programs of
course each portray a reality, but in the absence of proven theories in the
area of human affairs they cannot offer a universal framework of explanation.
The focus and quality varies.

Companies spend millions of dollars on training. In many cases, people have
fun and like the training, but four or five months later, little has changed
in the workplace. I believe a large reason for this is that the training is
situational / anecdotal and focuses on "what/how to DO." Each participant is
left to integrate the many disparate lessons of the training experience into
the framework of their personal reality or understanding, such as it is.

People ask: Show me what to DO (cause) so I will get results (effect). Our
program shows clearly why this is fallacious, but that does not change the
fact that this is what many people expect until they know better.

Instructions on "what/how to DO" are valid only in a given set of
circumstances. Typically a training scenario is carefully selected and told
with drama and humor by a speaker. You are told what was done and what the
results were. You imagine that the same thing will happen if you do the same
thing. You feel euphoric as you imagine success.

A large part of the "what/how to DO" training does not really apply in
individual cases because the world is full of varying conditions and changing
disturbances. The lessons become irrelevant and are soon forgotten. Euphoria
fades away.

If much training is ineffective, how can we suggest that Purposeful
Leadership is of lasting value?

The major strength of the Purposeful Leadership program is that it explains
and applies a new theory called Perceptual Control Theory (PCT). PCT
recognizes and explains the phenomenon of control. It explains why and how
people do what they do. PCT is based on neurology and clear, detailed and
tested engineering concepts. PCT requires and offers scientific rigor with
explanation and prediction.

PCT is an engineering science of psychology that is easy to understand for
an engineer used to explaining/predicting/testing scientific thinking.

Once the phenomenon of control is observed and the detailed explanation
understood, it will be seen that control is the fundamental organizing
principle of life. Control is pervasive and can be seen operating at a
microscopic level as well as at the macro level of human activity.

PCT explains a wide variety of phenomena of everyday experience.

If this new theory is so much better, why is it not widely known already?

Thomas S. Kuhn, a leading scientific philosopher, professor at MIT and author
of: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, provides an answer. From the
book cover:

       ....Thomas S. Kuhn wastes little time on demolishing the logical
       empiricist view of science as an objective progression toward the
       truth. Instead, he erects from the ground up a structure in which
       science is seen to be heavily influenced by nonrational
       procedures... ....Science is not the steady, cumulative
       acquisition of knowledge that is portrayed in our textbooks.
       Rather it is a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by
       intellectually violent revolutions  ....in each of which one
       conceptual world view is replaced by another....

                                                Nicholas Wade, Science

Thomas Kuhn introduced the term "paradigm" in this book and suggests that
scientists schooled in a certain set of views adopt them as their personal
"paradigms" (or reality) and then view the world through these paradigms -
as if they were eyeglasses filtering information. The word paradigm means
pattern. It is used to signify how we interpret a phenomenon; how we explain
the world to ourselves.

In Kuhn's view, everyone is a scientist, and every world view (or reality)
might be called a personal science. Everyone has some framework of ideas of
how the world "works" and  views the world through those personal paradigms.

There are many levels of scientific rigor and interpretations of the word
theory.

To some, "theory" is a "four letter word" signifying head-in-the-clouds
irrelevant hokus-pokus. All theory is incomprehensible and irrelevant. From
this perspective: You know what they say about engineers.

To some, "theory" means a description of a phenomenon. It is hard to test
descriptions of phenomena in a rigorous way. Words are defined by other
words.

To some, "theory" means a logical structure built on well defined hypotheses,
which stand apart from the real world. This kind of theory is subject to
logical proof.

To some, "theory" means precise description, explanation, prediction and
test. Testing is done in the "real world" of hardware and is subject to small
errors due to things like manufacture and measurements.

A person can certainly be aware of different meanings of the word theory and
use it differently in different contexts.

To me, theory is the information / understanding / expectation a person uses
to guide activity, no matter what the person calls it or how clear / valid
it is as a map of that REALITY. In this view, everyone is full of theories
and nothing but. But the quality varies.

When a new theory (normally an extension of existing theory) is offered to
an engineering scientist, the course is clear. Study the theory based on
existing paradigms (which have proven 99.999+% dependable and usually allow
excellent comprehension). Predict something based on the new theory, perform
the experiment and accept or reject the theory expecting 99.999+%
performance.

When a radically new theory is offered to a scientist, understanding can be
difficult. If the old and the new concepts are incompatible, it may literally
be impossible to see the new theory through the eyes of the old paradigm.

To illustrate, let us go back to a well known episode of a revolution between
a well established descriptive science of astronomy and a new, incompatible,
engineering science of astronomy.

In the beginning of the 17th century, Ptolemy's model (AD 140) of an earth-
centered universe was still fully accepted. This model was complete with
crystal spheres to carry the heavenly bodies and ample room for heaven and
hell beyond the eighth sphere, the firmament. Learned scholars who had
studied and accepted this model and fitted it into their reality, were not
open to a new and different explanation.

In 1543, on his deathbed, Copernicus published a model of a sun-centered
universe. (Kepler published additions in 1609-18). In 1610 and more
explicitly in 1632, Galileo supported Copernicus' theory, based on the first
ever observations by telescope and the discovery of Jupiter's moons. He had
trouble being published in the scientific journals of the day (church
bulletins?), due to the requirement that his manuscript be accepted by a
group of his peers.

(It is of passing interest that on October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II
acknowledged the church's error in this matter).

We understand today that his ideas were incomprehensible to the (church)
scholars of the day, due to what they already understood as their personal
paradigm. Of course Galileo's writings were irrelevant to their science as
they understood it and not a constructive and welcome contribution to the
state of the art.

So Galileo self-published. Despite the persecution he personally suffered as
a result, astronomy started over as an engineering science and made rapid
progress.

Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, (1687) completed
the revolution, but was resisted in the same way. According to Kuhn, it took
fifty years for Newton's work to be fully accepted.

This well known revolution is not an isolated case. Kuhn describes many
upheavals in several disciplines. The opportunity for a revolution arises
when a current paradigm fails to solve problems and competing paradigms are
offered to provide better explanations. A struggle of many decades typically
takes place. Established scientists continue the development, application and
defense of the existing paradigm as usual while outsiders and early converts
champion a new one.

A reading of Kuhn's seminal book makes it clear that there is lots of room
in our sciences of today for coming revolutions.

New information - on any subject - is always filtered by what you already
understand. PCT itself explains why this is so. Where a person has existing
convictions, conflicting information is either not comprehended or rejected.

A person without convictions on a certain subject is more open to new
information.

This is why scientific revolutions typically originate from outside the
scientific community which has accepted the present paradigm.

Perceptual Control Theory is a new engineering science of psychology. It
offers description, explanation and prediction. Tests show 95-98+%
correlation, with the remaining 2-5% accounted for by expected imperfection
of control: less than infinite loop gain, slow response and sloppy
connections in the environment.

PCT offers an opportunity for a transition from a descriptive science of
psychology where theory and application are worlds apart to an engineering
science of psychology, where theory and application fit like hand in glove.

For contemporary journals of psychology to publish articles on PCT, the
phenomenon of control must be understood in detail in a review by peers who
have internalized an understanding and strong convictions based on a
scientific method limited to the study of cause and effect. An understanding,
endorsement and acceptance of PCT is obviously very difficult. PCT itself
explains why.

On the other hand, PCT is immediately acceptable -intuitively obvious- to
people without such understanding and convictions. It is easy to understand
and immediately useful.

Without good theory, every problem must be solved by trial and error.

In engineering school, you learn a theory, then spend time on problem after
problem to learn to recognize how the theory applies and get used to using
it. What you remember is the theory, not individual solutions.

With Purposeful Leadership and PCT, you learn a theory/structure, then spend
time with application after application to recognize how the theory applies
and get used to think that way. What you remember is the theory, not
individual "what/how to DO" solutions.

The power of a program based on a good theory is awesome.

There is nothing as practical as a good theory based program.


WHO WILL PAY ATTENTION?

PCT explains clearly that the only thing that drives us are our concerns. For
this reason, the program, theory and applications must be understood to have
relevance to the concerns that are in the forefront of the mind of each
participant.

Those participants who have concerns which are addressed by the things PCT
promises to explain will want to pay attention. Those who are satisfied with
their own understanding, skills and results have no reason to pay attention.


WHO CAN UNDERSTAND?

Because personal concerns determine what is of interest and relevant, the
program is structured to provide immediate relevance and usefulness as much
as possible, with maximum clarity:                     (Program details shown
elsewhere).

1st Day:      Introduction to theory, values and methodology
              Effectiveness application

2nd Day:      Related concepts
              Leadership applications

The first and second day require careful attention, nothing more.

3rd Day:      Biology / engineering details.
              Structural details.
              Computer demonstrations.

Again, attention and interest is the key. A willingness to think in terms of
explanation, prediction and test is very helpful.


PCT APPLIED IN VALUES, METHODOLOGY AND ROLE PLAY

The value of Purposeful Leadership is in the theory we teach. To make the
theory come alive with relevance to the individual, it must be applied. As
the chinese proverb says:

       I hear        - I forget.
       I see               - I remember.
       I do                - I understand.

PCT describes how an individual operates in all circumstances. (We illustrate
both cooperation and conflict in active demonstrations). PCT makes no value
judgements.

But most people adopt values which constrain their options in working with
others.

We specifically define (using PCT) what we mean by:

       Supporting individual effectiveness

       Respect for the individual

       Balance: Appropriate level of direction and involvement
              - minimize conflict
              - maximize cooperation

Given an acceptance of these leadership values/objectives, we offer a
comprehensive methodology which can serve as a guide in a great number of
circumstances.

We illustrate the theory, using this methodology, in several scripted
vignettes. These are read, broken down to show the use of the methodology and
discussed among participants.

The variety of interpretations and applications in these role plays makes it
clear that the methodology is NOT a rigid "what/how to DO" set of rules, but
only a guide to help you systematically consider various aspects of what the
theory teaches you. Situations and disturbances in real life vary so much
that the action required to accomplish the same outcome is never the same.
This is why it is fallacious to teach "what/how to DO."

Some participants will view the methodology as a comprehensive "what/how to
DO" prescription despite our comments to the contrary. (After all that is
what people have come to expect from seminars in a cause-effect world). There
is no harm in this. Taken as that, the methodology is an excellent "what/how
to DO" prescription.

Participants are then invited to plan an act out a sequence of similar
situations, given a scenario which is relevant to them, taken from their
world of daily work. This scenario is developed ahead of time by a
representative of the group and the teacher.

Each role play for a participant provides practice for a work situation, the
way a sales role play provides practice for the salesman's work. This makes
it personally relevant. The scenario for role plays is tied to the work
environment where the training is to be applied, and provides continuity
between role plays, from one to the next. Additional details will come from
the common experience and imagination of participants.

This detailed scenario will do triple or quadruple duty. It portrays (for
each group) some common process, problem or source of conflict between the
fictitious characters such as Joe, Dave and Bill which can :

1)     be resolved between Joe and Dave in a manager/subordinate or peer to
       peer conflict role play, focusing on wants, then

2)     be facilitated by Joe in a team building situation between Dave and
       Bill, focusing on mutual perceptions, then later

3)     proudly reported as an accomplishment by the employee Dave or brought
       up as a concern by the manager Joe in a performance review and finally

4)     serve as a concern Dave has, addressed by the salesman Joe. (Sales only
       if a sales application is desirable given a particular audience).

Role play 1 is part of the agenda for Day 1, role plays 2-4 are on the agenda
for Day 2.


SOME OF WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

How and why all understanding is individually subjective.
How and why what you choose to want affects what you do.
How and why what you choose to perceive affects what you do.
How and why dissatisfaction is the mother of invention.
What motivation is.
How to develop and support individual effectiveness.
Why two people can look at the same facts and draw different conclusions.
How and why your memories affect what you do.
What it means to respect another person.
How and why stimulus-response is an illusion.
How and why a reward may not motivate but create resentment instead.
When helping a person conflicts with respect for the person.
How to communicate effectively with subordinates.
How to conduct mutually satisfying and productive performance reviews.
What is required to develop and maintain an effective team effort.
How to resolve conflict with another person if at all possible.


RELEVANCE TO WORK LIFE

Conflict resolution:       - in a superior / subordinate relationship.
                     - in a peer - to - peer relationship.
                     - in a subordinate / superior relationship.
Total Quality Management framework.
Leadership understanding.
Team development.
Performance reviews.
Vision/Mission statements.
Goal setting.
Non-manipulative selling.
Teaching effectiveness, initiative and responsibility.
Develop trust, mutual respect and high morale.


RELEVANCE TO PERSONAL LIFE

Conflict resolution.
Develop loving relationships.
Develop self-sufficient children.
Develop self confidence.
-------------------------------------------------------

Best to all, Dag