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GOING DEEPER: Elements of the Experiential Array
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Strategies
It is through our Strategies that what we know, believe and intend are put into action. A Strategy is made up of two parts: the "Test" - by which the exemplar evaluates his Criterion - and the "Operations" - which are the internal processes and external behaviors the exemplar engages in to satisfy the Test. Because of the inherent complexity of most Strategies, we use narrative description to capture them in a form that is sufficiently rich to be useful.
For 55 years Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg delighted millions of newspaper readers with his cartoons depicting innovative ways to accomplish simple tasks using strategies that were relentlessly logical and, at the same time, fabulously - and hilariously - complex:
Rube Goldberg TM & © of Rube Goldberg, Inc. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
It was apparent to Rube Goldberg that when human beings are faced with something to do, they can generally be counted on to find a way to accomplish it that requires far more effort than is really needed. In his cartoons we see reflected not only our penchant for making the simple unnecessarily complex, but also the precariousness of these strategies. They are often so obviously dependent upon the world cooperating - indeed, collaborating - that the desired outcome is not at all assured. In the cartoon above, the man sleeps secure in his faith that the sun will shine through his window, initiating the sequence of events that will get him out of bed. If it is a cloudy morning, however, his elaborate strategy is useless.
Still, we need strategies. We need to get out of bed, engage an audience, sort priorities, make financial decisions, select birthday gifts, plan meals, organize our day's work, find necessary information, deliver bad news to the boss, get the kids to clean their rooms, find out what is really going on with our mates, exercise, correctly spell a word, choose wisely from the menu, and come up with solutions to vexing problems. These are all things we do. For the most part, we do them without resorting to magnifying glasses and balanced bowling balls. Instead, we do a lot of thinking and interacting with the world.
This thinking and interacting is not random, of course. The thinking and interacting we do to get out of bed on time are specific to that specific purpose; it involves different considerations and different behaviors than selecting a birthday gift for a friend or spelling a word correctly. When faced with a desired outcome, we gather information, sort perceptions and float ideas, we pose questions, make statements and push buttons, we twist images, chew words and check our feelings, all in service of attaining that outcome. That is, we employ a strategy. You may well be unaware of all of the internal considerations and external actions that make up one of your strategies, but they are there, working to attain whatever the particular goal may be: Strategies are sets and sequences of internal processes and external behaviors intended to attain particular outcomes.
All of us have numerous strategies for dealing with the countless small and large outcomes, goals and needs that flow through our daily lives. However, as Rube Goldberg reminds us, not all strategies are created equal. Some work better than others. People who are good at a particular ability - that is, they consistently attain the outcomes essential to the particular context of their ability - are manifestly using effective strategies. How they think and interact in the world in that context works well; these are exemplars of their ability.
The Belief Template lays out in an accessible way the patterns of connection operating in the exemplar's experience. That is, it captures the structure. And in so doing, it transforms what would otherwise be an endless list of statements of belief into a set of fundamental relationships capable of generating that endless list.
THE T.O.T.E.
Like beliefs, strategies have an underlying structure. And, like beliefs, understanding that structure can help us capture an exemplar's strategy in a form that makes it more accessible. Much of the essential structure of strategies was described beautifully by Miller, Galanter and Pribram in their seminal book, Plans and the Structure of Behavior. (Miller, Galanter and Pribram define "Plan" as "...any hierarchical process in the organism that can control the order in which the sequence of operations is to be performed." p.16 This definition is not significantly different from our definition of Strategies as "...sets and sequences of internal computations and external behaviors intended to attain particular outcomes.") The advent of cybernetics made it evident to Miller and his cohorts that the old stimulus-response model for behavior was inadequate; in particular, it neglected the significance of the feedback loop in governing experience and behavior. A feedback loop is operating whenever a change in the present state of a system precipitates responses throughout the system (that is, things happen) to bring it back to the desired state. A familiar example of this is the system loop between a thermostat and a cooler: when the temperature rises beyond a set point, the thermostat turns on the cooler; when the temperature returns below the set point, the thermostat turns off the cooler.
Miller et al captured this essential aspect of behavior in a model they called the T.O.T.E. The acronym stands for "Test Operate Test Exit," and was graphically represented as:
(after Miller, Galanter and Pribram., 1960)
This elegant diagram captures the essential distinctions and relationships fundamental to any strategy. To begin with, the individual is Testing the congruity or incongruity of input. What she is testing for is the congruence between her Criterion (desired experience) and the input (actual experience). When the test of the Criterion is satisfied, she is free to "exit" and move on to the next Criterion that needs satisfied. This "next Criterion" could, of course, be a re-testing of the one just satisfied, as when one is engaged in the iterative task of slicing a carrot into pieces of a certain thickness.
If there is incongruence between the input and the Criterion, the person engages in a set of behaviors, called an Operation, in an attempt to satisfy the Criterion. As Miller et al put it, "The test phase can be regarded as any process for determining that the operational phase is appropriate" (p.29). More simply, an Operation is a set of actions a person engages in order to satisfy a Criterion.
The criteria we test for may be unconscious or conscious, and they range from those concerning the most fundamental, organismic levels of response, such as maintaining blood saline concentration (avoiding pain, standing erect, locating a sound and so on), to the most abstract levels of experience, such as deciding what constitutes the meaning of life (or recognizing facial expressions, understanding words, evolving ideas and so on). Similarly, the range of Operational behaviors spans all functional levels of the organism: the Operation to bring blood saline concentration to normal may involve the behavior of drinking water, while the Operation to feel like a worthwhile person may involve the cognitive process of surveying the history of one's life for meaningful moments.
Nested TOTEs
Obviously, it is never the case that we are engaging only one TOTE at a time. Our experiences and behaviors are the sum expression of many tests and operations going on both simultaneously and sequentially, consciously and unconsciously, and at various functional levels. For instance, the slicing of carrots is made possible by the coordination of numerous sub-TOTEs that guide the process of cutting itself. (e.g. "Is the knife blade all the way through the carrot?") Going in the direction of the larger "nests," it is probably the case that the slicing of the carrots is itself a sub-TOTE contributing to the satisfaction of other, inclusive TOTEs. (e.g. "Is that enough to feed the family?") Like Russian dolls, our experience and behavior are made up of TOTEs "nested" inside of TOTEs, which are themselves nested inside of other TOTEs, and so on. A diagram of a very few of the nesting TOTEs for slicing the carrot might look like this:
 The TOTE also suggests the nested nature of Strategies. Strategies (and in fact, all behaviors) are the sum expression of many layers of TOTEs operating together, from autonomic regulation of responses on up to the reasoning of abstractions. Regardless of the Strategy level we choose to describe, there will undoubtedly be numerous other Strategies nested within it. The sum of those nested Strategies is the Strategy we are currently eliciting from our exemplar. (The notion of "nested Strategies" may seem familiar to you from our discussion of "sub-abilities" in Essay 2: Getting Started. A sub-ability will have its own Array - including the Strategy - nested within a "larger" Array of the ability. Thus, "Slicing a proper thickness" and "cutting all the way through" are both modelable sub-abilities of the ability to "Slice carrots," and "Pushing down" is a sub-ability of "cutting all the way through," and so on.)
The TOTOTOTO...
In the examples we have considered so far an unsatisfied Test triggers the Operations needed to satisfy it, after which the person "exits," moving on to the next TOTE. Often, however, rather than simply attain the goals set by the Criterion, a Strategy works to maintain the satisfaction of the Criterion. In this case, the person is not waiting until her Criterion is unsatisfied to engage her Operations. Instead, as soon as she is in the appropriate context, she is engaging those internal processes and external behaviors that support the satisfaction of her Criterion, and she continues using them as long as she is in that context. An example might be a therapist for whom "rapport" is important. From the very beginning of the therapy session she will engage in those behaviors that foster rapport, and she does not abandon those behaviors once she discovers, "Ah, I have achieved rapport!" Instead, the therapist continues to manifest those behaviors that support rapport throughout the session.
The TOTE and Strategies
The TOTE usefully points out the two, fundamental functions of a Strategy - Testing and Operating - and shows how these functions relate to one another: an unsatisfied Test recursively initiates an Operation until the Test is satisfied.
Or to put it another way, what engages behavior - and keeps it engaged - is the desire or need to satisfy criteria. This is an essential point for understanding Strategies. Strategies are not simply about engaging in a set of internal processes and external behaviors. For three important reasons, those behaviors need to be in service of satisfying a specific (even if unconscious) Criterion:
* First, without a Criterion, of behavior lacks focus. The Criterion provides ongoing relevancy and an effectiveness check for our behaviors. (When slicing the carrot, knowing the desired thickness allows us to make adjustments in the knife position, rather than whacking away just anywhere on the carrot.)
* Second, a Criterion is a description of what is wanted or desired, and so is naturally motivating. Because it is inherently pleasing to satisfy a Criterion, it helps ensure that we persist with the behaviors of the Strategy. (Having "enough to feed the family" may well carry us through the tedium of slicing all those carrots.)
* And third, a Criterion lets us know when to stop operating and move on. Without the feedback provided by the Criterion, we may continue to run the behaviors of the Operation long past the point of usefulness. (Told simply to "slice carrots," we could end up knee deep in them when, in fact, only a cup of sliced carrots was "enough.")
NARRATIVE STRATEGIES
The TOTE is useful as a conceptual tool, and is excellent for portraying a Strategy in which the Test and Operation are simple and small enough to be succinctly described. However, the vast majority of abilities that we would want to model involve the operation of whole sets of internal processes and external behaviors. We could reduce all of them to individual, succinct, nested TOTEs. But by the time we had them all described and tied together with input and exit arrows, we will have a plate of experiential spaghetti that no one could digest. In the example of slicing a carrot, for instance, we merely scratched the surface of "the ability to slice enough carrots," and we still generated a TOTE diagram of considerable complexity. What, then, would we end up with if we tried to use such diagrams to capture the complexity of, say, "the ability to negotiate consensus in groups"?
It can be argued that the TOTE - or some such diagrammatic representation - not only presents the content and the relationships, but also has the virtue of presenting it all at once, as a "picture." But unless such a diagram is relatively simple and made up of immediately known elements, it still must be "read," that is, deciphered sequentially. And that is when it becomes easy to get lost in its complexity. (For example, take a look at any organizational flow chart.)
Furthermore, the arrows in the TOTE suggest a sequential flow of events. But is this what really happens in our experience and behavior? Are our Strategies laid out like experiential Rube Goldberg constructions such that, once triggered, there follows a particular step-by-step sequence of events? Perhaps the answer is yes when dealing with very simple, very basic pieces of behavior, such as squinting to protect yourself from a sudden, bright light. But most human abilities - and certainly the vast majority of those we would want to model - are not so pure and simple.
And let's not forget the nested nature of TOTEs. Any of the actions that make up a Strategy will be made up of other constituent actions. And many of these nested TOTEs (or if you prefer, nested strategies, sub-routines, sub-abilities, etc.) may well be operating simultaneously. For example, grasping a cup involves the operating of dozens of simultaneous nested TOTEs governing the movement and coordination of eyes, posture, arms, hands and fingers, all of which combine to "create" the higher level action of "grasping the cup."
Obviously, there is no level of detailed description that can utterly capture any Strategy as it is "lived." (Any description is an abstraction - not a duplication - of an experience.) And even if we could, we would not want to because that sea of specification would quickly swamp our experience. How can we usefully capture the complex nesting of internal and external operations that make up a Strategy? The answer is, through narrative description.
By "narrative" we mean "telling the story." In the context of describing the Strategy, we are simply capturing the natural language "story" of how the exemplar does what she does. One of the beautiful things about language is that a word or two can conjure up the worlds of experience connected to them. Language has built into it the cues for those "things" and "actions" that are relevant to the communication. For instance, "I keep slicing carrots into thin pieces until there is enough for the family," brings into our experience the relevant actors, actions and objects ("I" "slicing" "carrots" "family"). In addition, language puts them in relationship to one another ("I slice carrots for the family"). Language also provides modifiers that cue us to qualities of those things and of how they relate to one another ("I keep slicing carrots into thin pieces until there is enough for the family"). Each of these words matters in that each one brings with it a host of associations, nested TOTEs, filaments of connection, nuances of meaning. Just the word, "slice," for instance, calls up a whole network of perceptions, associations and actions connected with the notion of "slicing," a network that is substantially different from that of "chopping," "whacking" or even "cutting" carrots. "Slicing" conveys a tremendous amount of information regarding what to do.
And, clearly, the depth and breadth of experience conveyed in a sentence of description will be exponentially greater than that of a single word. Narrative description, then, can be an efficient way to access the complex experiential associations you need in order to make an exemplar's Strategy come alive in your own experience.
The Test
A Strategy is a set of internal processes and external behaviors intended to satisfy a Criterion, and it is this "intention" to have that Criterion met which sets the Strategy into motion. The Criterion establishes a goal, but of course you also need a way to know whether or not - or to what extent - that goal is met. And so you Test for the satisfaction of your Criterion. (This "knowing" is not necessarily conscious, as we discussed in Essay 8: The Belief Template.)
Criteria and their Definitions tend to be abstractions (as we discussed in the previous essay). How can we test abstractions? We test them in experience, naturally, where abstractions take forms that we can see, hear and feel. And so a nail is "flush" when you see its head at the same level as the surface of the board (or you feel with your fingers that it is at the same level, or you hear it make a dull thumping sound, or you feel a heavy reverberation through your arm). And a dish is "clean" when you see no spots (or your finger squeaks across its surface, or someone compliments you on its cleanliness). And a peach is "ripe" when it looks mostly red (or it yields to gentle pressure, or is fragrant, or the sign says they are ripe). You probably recall these sights, sounds, textures and smells as examples of Evidence of Fulfillment from the essay on the Belief Template. And of course, it is Evidence of the Criterion which you are Testing for in your Strategy:
A Test is what must be seen, heard and/or felt to know that a Criterion is being met.
(Because most Evidence for human beings will be found in the visual, auditory and kinesthetic sensory systems, we will not trouble you with "...taste and smell" every time we refer to the sensory systems. They are there, nevertheless; not cited perhaps, but not forgotten!)
Imagine, for example, that you want to embark on an exercise program and have turned for advice to a friend who exercises regularly. One of the things she impresses upon you is that "If you want to get anything out of it, you have to make sure you get a good workout, a workout in which you really exert yourself." So, the workout needs to be "good," which means "you really exert yourself." But how do we know when we are really exerting ourselves and, so know when to intensify or reduce our efforts? What do we see, hear or feel that signifies that we are sufficiently exerting ourselves? Of course, each of us will have our own answer to that. Just as different people may have different Definitions for the same Criterion, there can be different ways to know when a particular Criterion is satisfied.
For example, "I know I am really exerting myself in my exercise program when...
...my muscles are hurting as I work out."
...my muscles are sore the next day."
...I'm doing more repetitions than I did during my last workout."
...at the end of my workout I've done more repetitions than I did in my previous workout."
...I feel exhausted but relaxed when I finish."
...I'm feeling stronger every day."
...people tell me I'm looking fit."
...I see the rest of my day and see myself having greater energy."
...my breathing is heavy and my muscles are tired."
...I feel exhausted and say to myself that I can't go any further."
...I feel the sweat pouring off me, and people look impressed when they see me working out."
If you "step in" and try some of these Tests, it will quickly become obvious that the nature of the Test makes a significant difference in determining your experience. Each of them orients you to different possibilities to notice and respond to in the world of your experience. For instance, some of these Tests occur during exercise ("my muscles are hurting as I work out," "I'm doing more repetitions than I did during my last workout," "people in the gym look impressed when they see me working out"). Such Tests orient you to ongoing experience, providing feedback that allows you to make adjustments in your workout (increasing or decreasing repetitions, for instance) while you are doing it. If instead your Test is, "My muscles are sore the next day," you will be judging in retrospect how "good" your workout was, and have to wait to make adjustments until your next workout session.
Since the nature of the Test significantly affects experience, it is worth looking briefly at some of the possible forms Tests come in so that you will be better able to recognize them and their particular contribution to your exemplar's ability:
SENSORY / IMAGINAL
Some Tests are based on sensory experiences, as in "People tell me I'm looking fit" (auditory), and in all of the examples we used above for knowing that a nail is flush, a dish is clean and a peach is ripe. Tests can also be satisfied by experiences that are largely (or even purely) imaginal. For instance, a person who knows that she has "really exerted" herself when "I see the rest of my day and see myself with great energy," has a Test based on an imagined visual experience. Or the person who knows she is "finished" with a period in her life when, "I hear in my head the gentle clunk of a door closing," has an imagined auditory Test. Likewise, a person who knows that she "understands" when "I can imagine myself using the knowledge," is using a Test that is imagined experience, though we are not sure which sensory systems are involved. It is likely that she is seeing something, and she may be hearing and feeling things as well; but in any case it is with the eyes, ears, and body of imagination. (Although we subjectively experience some things as being "outside" ourselves, and others as being "inside" ourselves, all experience occurs internally.)
PAST / PRESENT / FUTURE
Like all experiences, of course, Tests always - and can only - occur in the present. But the Tests may be about the past, present or future. Time frame is about the "when" of subjective experience - where in time is the person placing her attention: on the past, the present or the future? Examples of a present Test include "My muscles are hurting as I work out" and "I can feel the sweat pouring off of me and people in the gym look impressed when they see me working out." A Test such as "I see the rest of my day and see myself having greater energy," is about the future. And an example of a past Test is, "At the end of my workout I have done more repetitions than I did during my previous workout."
INTERMITTENT / ONGOING
In some cases you Test your Criterion intermittently, that is, either once in awhile or at a specific time. For example, if you know your workout is good when "I feel exhausted but relaxed when I finish," you are waiting until the end of the workout to "know." If instead you knew by "My muscles are hurting as I work out," you would be determining throughout the time you are exercising whether or not you are getting a good work out.
SELF / OTHERS
Sometimes is your own experience and behavior that is meaningful to you, such as when the Test for a good workout is "I feel exhausted but relaxed when I finish." And sometimes your Tests will place more significance in the responses of others, as in the case of "People tell me I'm looking fit." And, of course, it may be that both matter: "I can feel the sweat pouring off of me, and people in the gym look impressed when they see me working out."
MATCHING / SCALING
In some instances you may be testing for a particular experience, and there is either a "match" for that experience or there is not. If your "good workout" Test is "My breathing is heavy and my muscles are tired," you will not consider your workout is "good" until and unless you are breathing heavily and your muscles are tired. Another possibility is that you perceive the experience you are testing for as being something that ranges in a continuum from "not there at all" to "completely there." This scaling means that the result of your Test will be in terms of more/less, or faster/slower, or better/worse, or higher/lower and so on. For instance, if the person whose Test is "I'm doing more repetitions than I did during my last workout," lifts the weight just one more time than she did in her previous workout, she is having a "good workout."
SINGLE / MULTIPLE / ASSORTED EXPERIENCES
In some contexts, we are testing for one particular experience (e.g. "My muscles are hurting as I work out"). In other contexts we may be after satisfying a complete set of multiple experiences. For instance, the person whose "good workout" Test is, "I feel exhausted and say to myself that I can't go any further," may feel exhausted, but she will not consider her workout "good" until she is also saying to herself, "I can't go any further." It is also often the case that we will have a set of Test experiences, and that experiencing any one or some of them is enough to satisfy the Criterion. For example, "I'm doing more repetitions than I did during my last workout is one way. Also, sometimes I can tell because my muscles are sore the next day. And it could even be that people are telling me I'm looking fit." This person can be satisfied that her workout is "good" when she is "doing more repetitions," or when her "muscles are sore the next day," or when people "tell me I'm looking fit."
Obviously, the structure of any Test consists of a combination of these distinctions (as well as others we have not identified here). For instance:
"My breathing is heavy and my muscles are tired."
[sensory, present, ongoing, self, matching, multiple experiences]
"People tell me I'm looking fit."
[sensory, present, intermittent, other, matching, multiple experiences]
"I see the rest of my day and see myself having greater energy."
[imaginal, future, self, scaling, single experience]
The structure of the Test clearly matters. The experiential dynamics created by the structure underlying, "My breathing is heavy and my muscles are tired," are significantly different from those of, "People tell me I'm looking fit." (Not better, not worse; just different.) The ongoing self assessment of, "My breathing is heavy and my muscles are tired," will naturally lead you to make constant adjustments in your workout, working harder or easing up as needed in order to get that heavy breathing and those tired muscles. In contrast, the intermittent other assessment of, "People tell me I'm looking fit," will lead you to seek out periodic feedback from others, which you can then use to judge your past performance and make adjustments for the next time.
Which is the right Test to use when working out? The ongoing self assessment, "My breathing is heavy and my muscles are tired," sounds like a good idea. After all, it keeps you free from the shifting judgements of others. Furthermore, it has you attending to your body's responses, so you can work hard while not overdoing it to the point of hurting yourself. On the other hand, it may be that this ongoing, self-based Test will leave you vulnerable to not working hard enough - or to even quitting - because your attention is so much on how tired and sore you are feeling. When it comes to working out, perhaps it is better to have the intermittent, other-based Test of, "People tell me I'm looking fit." It will allow you to better dissociate from the ongoing discomfort. And it may be that wanting to have other people comment on your "looking fit" promotes greater perseverance than does feeling aching muscles. So, which of these Tests - or any of the others that we listed above - is the "right" one?
Answering that question is why we are modeling, of course. Rather than making the answering of that question an academic exercise in which we decide which sounds or ought to be right, we find exemplars, that is, people who do successfully work out. Whatever Test these people are using, it is manifestly compatible - and perhaps essential - to the ability to get a good work out.
THE TEST AND MODELING ABILITIES
Action without direction is, literally, pointless. And an exemplar's actions are, by definition, anything but pointless. Whatever our exemplar is doing, we can be sure that it is in service of some Criterion. The Criterion creates a focal point for her actions and, in particular, the opportunity for feedback. Feedback is essential for evaluating the relevancy and effectiveness of her actions, to know whether to continue, change or stop what she is doing. Indeed, having feedback with respect to a Criterion is so significant that it is often all a person needs in order to eventually attain competency in an ability. There are numerous biofeedback and other learning studies demonstrating that, given accurate feedback regarding the desired response, a person can learn to correctly respond to a subtle pattern, or even control internal metabolic and neurological processes, and do this without any conscious awareness of the behaviors they have developed to do it.
When it comes to specifying the Test, we put a premium on descriptions based on sensory system discriminations. These discriminations include not only what is seen with the eyes, heard with the ears, and felt with the body, but what is seen, heard and felt in imagination as well. This emphasis on describing what the exemplar is seeing, hearing and feeling helps insure that we are getting a description that is closer to the exemplar's Test experience, rather than an interpretation or abstraction (Criterion and Definition) of that experience. Such descriptions help us to access those same Tests in ourselves in a form that is more true to experience as lived.
How specific do we need to be when it comes to capturing the Test? To some extent, this depends upon the ability being modeled. For example, in modeling the ability to play notes on the violin, we are likely to find that the Test for "proper intonation" is precise; there is a particular note you need to create, and being a bit off it is just not good enough. But if our exemplar is testing for, "I'm sweating a lot," do we need to establish how many beads of sweat constitutes "a lot?" Probably not. Remember that it is not our goal to reproduce the exemplar, but to reproduce the ability.
What matters is that we capture a description that is sufficiently rich to allow us to Test our experience in the same way that the exemplar does. And so we elicit a narrative description of the Test. Depending upon the ability and the exemplar, we could end up with anything from a precise micro-experience that must be matched sensation-for-sensation, to a "macro" experience that, although complex, is nevertheless familiar to most people. For instance, suppose our exemplar knows that her employees are "committed" (Criterion) to a project when "I can see they are eager to proceed" (Test). That Test covers relatively extensive and complex discriminations. Still, it is acceptable as a Test because most of us have personal experience of what "eagerness to proceed" looks and sounds like. It only becomes unacceptable if, down the road, we discover that our experience of "eagerness to proceed" does not sufficiently match that of the exemplar. Ultimately, it is in using the Test ourselves that we discover the level of specification we need from the exemplar in order to manifest her ability in ourselves.
Since the Criterion and its Evidence are what the exemplar is Testing for, we already have Lenny's Test for his Strategy for maintaining his diet. (Remember that Beliefs, Strategies, Emotions and External Behavior are different sets of distinctions applied to the same ability. The ability itself is not divided in this way; we do that to help reveal its essential patterns. So it is not at all unusual to find a particular aspect of the exemplar's structure represented in more than one of the elements of experience. The correlation between the Evidence and the Test is the one overlap that will always be there.) Lenny's Test is:
The points we made in the previous essay regarding the significance of Lenny's Evidence are, of course, true about his Test as well. His Test (level of energy and clarity of mind) puts his attention on his ongoing and internal experience, making him perhaps much more able to notice and respond to ongoing shifts in his blood sugar than someone who tested for "regulated blood" using periodic finger 'sticks'. Furthermore, because his Test is internally generated, he is not dependent upon the often capricious responses of the external world. And, finally, because his Test is about the quality of his internal experience, he gets relatively frequent feedback about changes in his state and, so, is frequently faced with the need to do - or not do - something in response to it. This helps keep the importance of his diet present and real for him.
The Operations
Our Operations are what each of us does to satisfy our Criteria. When it comes to "doing," we often fix our attention on our external behaviors; that is, on how we move, what we say, facial expressions, and sequences of observable actions. But of course, we act on the inside as well. Obviously, there are differences between moving furniture in a room and moving furniture in your head. Moving furniture in your head does not, in and of itself, affect anything in the world outside of you, for instance. Like moving furniture in the room, however, doing it in your head involves engaging in actions, although these actions are in the form of "internal processes," computation, representation, spatial manipulation, internal dialogue, internal questions, sensations, memory sorting, shifts in perspective, and so on.
It is essential to recognize the strategic importance of internal processes. In trying to emulate others - whether through some kind of formal modeling, apprenticeship, or mimicry - usually we try to pattern our own behavior after that of the other person. This often doesn't work, however, because the people we are emulating are doing things that go beyond what we can observe in their behavior. They are also "doing" on the inside, engaging in internal processing. Their internal processing is what is informing and guiding their external behavior. (This was also discussed in Essay 3: Distinctions.)
Of course, the relative importance of external behaviors to internal processes depends upon the ability being modeled. Multiplying numbers in one's head, for instance, will certainly involve the operation of a lot of internal processes and few external behaviors. The ability to sink baskets with a basketball requires the operation of many external behaviors and relatively few internal processes. (Of course doing anything involves millions of internal processes if we chunk down to the level of neurons firing and muscles twitching. Besides not being possible, it would not be desirable to capture experience at that level of specificity, because it is not the level of experience. We do not experience the thousands of computations that make it possible to lift a book; we experience lifting the book.)
Furthermore, the mix of external behaviors and internal processes may vary among exemplars. In modeling the ability of architects to come up with ideas for home design, for example, we might discover that one architect imagines combinations and distortions of shapes, volumes and lines until he finds a basic set which fits his client's desires and personality, and that another architect wanders around the actual home site, seeing possible shapes and walking "in" them until he finds those that fit his client's desires and personality. The first architect's Operations are almost entirely internal processes, and the Operations of the second architect involve both internal processes and external behaviors. (There are also some obvious similarities between the Operations of these two architects, structures which are probably responsible for both of them being good at coming up with design ideas.)
Sequences and Sets
Strategies are usually thought of as a sequence of steps: do this, then do this, then this, then this, and so on. And many strategies are just like that; sequences of operations that take the form of recipes, algorithms, formulas, steps, procedures and techniques for achieving desired outcomes. Cooking recipes, determining the income tax you owe the government and planting a garden are familiar examples of such strategies. Sugar must be "creamed" into the butter before adding the eggs; the tax percentage is applied to your income after subtracting your deductions; soil is turned over and soil amendments added before seeding. Internal strategies may also be sequential. The strategy of the architect in the above example may run something like: interview the home owners to discover what experiences they want to have in their home, then go to the site at different times of the day and night, then walk around it until you know it from every angle, then begin to imagine shapes and forms that fit with the desires of the clients, then actually walk "inside" those shapes to determine if they are likely to fit with the client, then... and so on. Like beads on a string, each step in such strategies is a prerequisite for effectively taking the step that follows.
But not all strategies can be beaded onto the string of sequence. Many strategies instead involve a "set" of internal processes and external behaviors. In these strategies there is not a first, second and third step to take, but a group of steps that are taken either simultaneously or in an ad hoc fashion. For instance, a strategy for "safe driving" might involve: look several hundred feet ahead and imagine how driving conditions might be changing for you; maintain sufficient stopping distance between you and the car in front; leave a place to go either left or right in case of an emergency; check mirrors every few seconds; shift your body enough to keep it loose and relaxed; and so on. This is not a sequential strategy, but a set of behaviors which are enacted as needed, sometimes sequentially and at other times simultaneously.
As we mentioned, a set of internal processes and external behaviors may be enacted in an ad hoc way. That is, they are put to use according to the demands of the current situation. We might learn that a negotiator's Strategy is to:
* "Discover things about the personal lives of the people involved."
* "Establish rapport," "Never lie to a participant, but always work to promote trust of me."
* "Search for what is underneath what each side is asking for, that is, what are they hoping
to satisfy by a particular demand."
* "Take an entrenched position to its logical conclusion and get agreement that this future is
not wanted by the person holding that position."
* "Widen each person's perspective whenever they establish a boundary."
* "If a person becomes angry with the other side, I make him aware of the inescapably
human element in the other side."
* "Praise and appreciate any example of willingness to cooperate," and so on.
None of these behaviors is necessarily a prerequisite to another, nor are they all necessarily operating all the time. Instead, all of them are available, and some or all of them are enacted depending upon what the negotiator is facing at the moment. Even such an obvious starting point as "establish rapport" might be pre-empted by an unexpected opportunity to "search for what is underneath" a participant's demand or the immediate need to "widen a person's perspective" with respect to a boundary.
Attain and Maintain
Strategies are often thought of as vehicles for getting to a certain destination; once there, you can stop driving. Indeed, the TOTE model reinforces this notion with its "Exit" last step; once you have attained the satisfaction of the Test, you are done and can Exit the Test-Operate cycle. Of course, many Strategies are of just this sort. An architect may transform shapes in her mind until she finds a house design that is "Relaxing," then exit that internal process to, perhaps, consider how to build that house design. The gardener who likes a "Neat" garden will pull weeds, rake, trim and so on until his garden is, in fact, neat, then pull up a chair for an iced tea. An editor may work a sentence until it "Flows," then move on to the next sentence. In each of these examples, once the person has satisfied her Criterion, there is no need to continue either Testing for it or Operating to satisfy it; it is time to Exit.
But as we pointed out in a previous section, for much of human experience the TOTE model is perhaps more accurately represented by "TOTOTOTO..." It is often the case that the context requires that a Criterion be satisfactorily maintained. That is, the Criterion is continually being Tested and the Operation is continually being enacted in order to support the ongoing satisfaction of the Criterion. For instance, a negotiator who considers "Trust" necessary to the successful conduct of a negotiation will engage her behaviors to foster trust and keep them engaged throughout the negotiation. Her initial success at gaining a person's trust does not lead the negotiator to abandon her trustworthy behaviors ("Great, they trust me! Now I can treat them anyway I want to!"). Similarly, an athlete may maintain "Focus" throughout her game, a meditator "Centered" during her practice, a lion tamer "Control" while in the cage, an artist "Truth" as she works on her canvas, and so on. Whatever these people are doing to satisfy their Criterion they keep doing to keep the Criterion satisfied. In these Strategies the Exit comes only when the person is no longer in the context and the Criterion is therefore no longer relevant.
PRIMARY OPERATIONS
"Don't you see, Bloom, darling Bloom, glorious Bloom? It's so simple. Step one: you find the worst play in the world, a surefire flop. Step two: I raise a million bucks. (There are a lot of little old ladies in the world.) Step three: you go back to work on the books, only list the backers one for the government and one for us. You can do it, Bloom. You're a wizard. Step four: we open on Broadway, and, before you can say step five, we close on Broadway. Step six: we take our million bucks and we fly to Rio de Janeiro! Rio, Rio-by-the-sea-o..."
Zero Mostel hatching his fool-proof plan in Mel Brooks' The Producers
The fact that a person is an exemplar of an ability - that is, that she consistently attains certain outcomes in a particular context - makes it extremely likely that she is employing the same Operation each time she is in that context. These are the sequences or sets of internal processes and external behaviors that work for the exemplar. We call this the "Primary Operation":
The Primary Operation is the usual set of internal processes and external behaviors that work to satisfy the Criterion.
Of course, everything we have said above regarding Operations in general is true for Primary Operations. They may involve internal processes or external behaviors or both; these internal processes and external behaviors may be organized sequentially, or as an ad hoc set of actions; they may be organized to satisfy the Criterion only at certain times, or to maintain the ongoing satisfaction of the Criterion. What makes these Operations "primary" is that they are the internal and external actions with which the exemplar always leads. And the exemplar does this for the very good reason that these particular internal processes and external behaviors work to satisfy her Criterion. But, of course, nothing always works.
SECONDARY OPERATIONS
How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast... Where did I go right?!
Zero facing the disaster of success in The Producers
The world is not always a cooperative partner. It doesn't always offer us the conditions and responses we expect or want. Your Primary Operation may not work - indeed, will not work - all the time. You run out of carrots before having "enough"; your co-worker seems impervious to your efforts at establishing "rapport"; the house you designed does not feel "comfortable" to your clients; you are too tired to have a "good" workout. Like the sleeper in the Rube Goldberg cartoon, there are times when all of us will face a cloudy day.
The unruly complexity of real life means that an essential aspect of any competency is being able to usefully respond when things are not working out in the usual way. The person who has only their Primary Operation on which to rely - no matter how effective it usually is - is standing on thin experiential ice. A little too much sun, an errant crack, a duck landing nearby, anything not normally accounted for, and that person is sunk. Most people who are exemplars of an ability have developed "Secondary Operations":
Secondary Operations are the internal processes and external behaviors used to satisfy the Criterion when the Primary Operation is ineffective.
Depending upon the ability and exemplar, there may be anything from none to dozens of Secondary Operations. However, the range of possible Operations can be usefully divided into three groups according to what is happening when the Criterion is Tested:
Criterion is INSUFFICIENTLY SATISFIED:
The complexity of human experience makes it possible to Test for some Criteria along a relative scale, such as "more/less" or "enough/not enough." And so a negotiator has "some rapport" with her clients, but not enough; the fact that the couple is "pretty comfortable" with the design of their home is not good enough for the architect; the workout is not going "as good as it could." The exemplar's experience is that her Criterion is insufficiently satisfied, and a different strategic tack is needed. For instance, the negotiator recognizes that her Primary Operation of being interested in the background and personal interests of her client is not working to create sufficient rapport for the negotiation. So she switches to her Secondary Operation of revealing things about her personal interests to the client.
Criterion is NOT AT ALL SATISFIED:
It can be the case that the exemplar's Primary Operation is doing nothing to satisfy the Criterion. Though the Primary Operation is usually effective, this time (for some reason) the negotiator has no rapport with the clients, the couple are not at all comfortable with the house design, or the workout is just not good. When the architect realizes that her clients are not at all comfortable with the house she has designed, for example, she shifts to a Secondary Operation in which she has the clients point out a home they do feel comfortable in, she asks them questions about what they are responding to, and then - in her imagination - she walks through the house to feel for herself how they are experiencing it.
Criterion CANNOT BE SATISFIED:
It may be the exemplar's experience that the Criterion cannot be satisfied, or at least cannot be satisfied "now" (for instance, it does not seem possible to get a good workout today). This is a bit different circumstance than the previous two in that, if the exemplar gets to this point, her Operation is probably one that allows her to let go of trying to satisfy her Criterion (though in a useful and appropriate way). And so, when the person working out recognizes that she is not going to have a "good workout," she engages a Secondary Operation, in which she considers what she needs to do so that next time she works out it can be "good," and changes the purpose of her current workout to "Getting my body warmed up" (shifting the Criterion).
We have found that these are useful ways to classify Secondary Operations. They generally cover the range of real life situations for which we are likely to want or need effective, strategic choices, namely, those times when our Criterion is "insufficiently satisfied," "not at all satisfied," and "cannot be satisfied."
Also, we are not suggesting that there will always be a Secondary Operation for each of these categories. The exemplar's response to "insufficiently satisfied" may be to simply continue with the Primary Operation until it is sufficient. Others may not consider "not at all satisfied" to be a possibility. These people are always finding some evidence of their Criterion being satisfied and, so, at worst they may perceive a situation as "insufficiently satisfied." And some exemplars will have no Secondary Operation to deal with the circumstance of "cannot be satisfied." It is simply not part of their experience and, so, they will persist with their Operations until they have satisfied their Criterion to some acceptable degree.
(We have often found that people who are exemplary at maintaining commitments or persevering do not have a Secondary Operation for "not possible." This lack of an Operation is clearly one of the structural pieces underlying their ability to maintain commitments and persevere. We have also found this Secondary Operation missing in individuals who obsess about things, i.e., they have no way to Exit from their Strategy. The contrast between these two examples illustrates that no element of structure is inherently either beneficial or a burden. Every element operates within the nexus of the whole; if it is beneficial, it is because of everything else that is operating around and with it. No single structural element gives rise to an ability; abilities are the result of a constellation of structural elements working together.)
OPERATIONS AND MODELING ABILITIES
An ability is the capacity or competence to act in such a way as to consistently produce a particular outcome. Of course, any action results in some kind of outcome. But we do not want "some kind" of outcome; we want a particular outcome. And so we do not want just "any action," but those that work; we want the Operations of an exemplar of the ability.
There is an understandable tendency to describe Strategy Operations as a sequence of steps. After all, sequences of steps clearly lay out what to do and when. For instance, here is the beginning of the Primary Operation of one of the architects:
1. Interview the home owners to discover:
a. What ideas they have about how they want the house to look.
b. What experience they want to have when in their home.
2. Go to the site at different times of the day to walk around until you know it from
every angle.
3. At the site, imagine shapes and forms that fit with the property and how the clients want
the house to look.
4. "Walk inside" those imagined shapes to get a sense if they create the experience the
clients want.
5. (Etc...)
Operations are often sequential, but you must also be ready to discover instead that the structure of your exemplar's Operation is organized as a set of actions, each of which is enacted according to the changing needs of the situation. We had an example of this in the Strategy of the negotiator:
* Show interest in the personal lives of the people involved.
* Establish rapport.
* Tell the truth, and if you can't, say nothing and explain why you cannot respond.
* Search for what is underneath what each side is asking for, that is, what are they hoping to
satisfy by each of their demands.
* Take an entrenched position to its logical - and unpleasant - conclusion, and get agreement
that this is a future the person does not really want.
* Widen each person's perspective whenever they establish a boundary.
* If a person becomes angry with the other side, make him aware of the inescapably human
element in the other side.
* Praise and appreciate any example of willingness to cooperate.
The use of "bullets" is to suggest that none of these Operations is necessarily a prerequisite to any other, nor are any of them necessarily enacted at the same time. They are brought to bear on the situation when needed. For instance, the negotiator doesn't take every stated position "to its logical and unpleasant conclusion." But when one of the negotiating parties digs himself into an entrenched position, the negotiator will take that position to its logical and unpleasant conclusion.
And, of course, your exemplar's Operations may be best captured as a mix of both sequences and sets of internal processes and external behaviors. For example, the negotiator's Operations might turn out to be:
1. Establish rapport.
* Show interest in the personal lives of the people involved.
* Tell the truth, and if you can't, say nothing and explain why you cannot respond.
2. Search for what is underneath what each side is asking for, that is, what are they hoping
to satisfy by each of their demands.
* Take an entrenched position to its logical - and unpleasant - conclusion, and
get agreement that this is a future the person does not really want.
* Widen each person's perspective whenever they establish a boundary.
* If a person becomes angry with the other side, make him aware of the
inescapably human element in the other side.
3. Establish a future - no matter how limited to begin with - that both sides can agree on.
* Praise and appreciate any example of willingness to cooperate.
4. (Etc...)
If you compare your experience of using this "mixed" version of the Operation with your experience of using the previous, non-sequential (all-bullet) version, you will notice that representing the Operation as a sequence imposes sequencing on your own thinking. Now when you think about conducting a negotiation, "establishing rapport" becomes a step to complete before moving on to the next step of searching for the "underneath" of the parties' demands, and so on. These become steps that you take, that you make happen. The fact that the behaviors within each of those sequential steps are represented as an ad hoc set imposes a different way of thinking. A set of behaviors creates a sense of being on the look out for, and being ready to respond to, certain situations. For example, during the period of establishing rapport, the negotiator's Operation primes you to notice opportunities to "show interest in the personal lives of the people involved," and, in those instances when you cannot respond by telling the truth, "saying nothing and explaining why you cannot respond."
A mix of sequential and ad hoc Operations is neither better nor worse than a purely sequential or purely ad hoc Operation. They are all just different, and they are all possible. The question (as always) is, How does the exemplar organize her experience? If for our exemplar, negotiation is a sequential set of actions, then that is how to capture her Operation. If instead she relates to negotiating as a set of actions that are employed as they become relevant, then we capture her Operations in a bullet (or similarly non-sequential) form. And of course, if for her there are both sequential and ad hoc actions, then we want to capture them in a form that conveys both.
Lenny's Primary Operation is, of course, to follow guidelines and steps laid out for him by the Zone diet (his Primary Operation would normally be a description of his eating regimen, but since that description already exists in the form of books, it is unnecessary to reproduce it in the model itself):
No matter why you are dieting, there is some dieting protocol that has been laid out for you that you need to follow if you want to have the effects of the diet. Most people we know are perfectly capable of following a diet. In the beginning. Where it often becomes a problem is in continuing to stick to it as the days turn into weeks and the weeks into months. The heady and self-reinforcing successes of the initial days are often followed by missteps, feelings of deprivation and frustrations that lead to such thoughts as, "I can't do this," "the diet isn't working," "it doesn't really matter if I don't follow it this once," "I can get serious about this next week," and so on. Regardless of the rationalization, the result is the same: the diet is dropped.
Successfully maintaining a diet regimen requires some way of effectively responding to these pitfalls. We want robust models, of course, models that withstand the often uncooperative vagaries of the real world. Much of this resiliency is the result of having effective Secondary Operations, and this is where the particular genius of Lenny's Strategy is to be found.
Like everyone else, there are times when Lenny either makes mistakes in following his diet, or rationalizes choices that violate his diet. If those mistakes or poor choices are significant, he will notice that he is not feeling as energetic, conscious and clear (this is what his Test sets him to notice). Instead of responding to this as so many of us do, by tumbling into a well of despondency ("It's no good," "It's no use," etc.), Lenny responds with an Operation that brings him right back into following his diet:
There are many brilliant aspects to his Secondary Operation, but to talk about them it is helpful to first look at what is often going on when someone is in that situation of needing to follow a regimen (diet, exercise, quitting smoking, etc.), but it isn't going "well." Human beings generally try to avoid what is unpleasant. We go away from what is painful. The decision to embark on a diet (or exercise or health program) is very likely to be triggered by something or some situation that has become so unpleasant in your present experience, that you feel it cannot be ignored and allowed to continue. Okay, so you start the diet. Then "something" unpleasant happens in relation to the diet: You are being offered cheesecake, which you love and have not had in weeks, and you feel deprived; or you are just feeling unhappy and know that ice cream would be comforting; or you have gone two weeks without losing any weight and feel frustrated, and so on. Now your present experience is (again) unpleasant - "deprived," "unhappy," "frustrated" - and, naturally, you want to go away from that. And eating the cheesecake or ice cream, or dumping the diet are ways of - in the present - getting away from those unpleasant feelings.
Lenny does something different, of course. By beginning with a recollection of the period of feeling physically terrible and ending up in the hospital, he brings into his experiential present the reality of what happens when he does not control his blood sugar. This is very different from what many people do who give up on a regimen. Like Lenny, they have had bad experiences (wheezing on a hike, having to buy larger clothes, fits of coughing), but unlike Lenny, these experiences are either not accessed, or are remembered only as information, as something that happened in the past. Lenny remembers being in the hospital, he is "there" again.
Many people who are trying to follow a regimen "know" what the future has in store for them if they do not stick with it (unable to get around, heart disease, lung cancer, etc.). But again, that future is just information. It isn't real. By recapturing into his present experience the very real pain of the past, Lenny gives himself (in step 2) the basis for a realistic - in fact, visceral - experience of what his future will be if he does not control his blood sugar. These first two steps provide a real and compellingly unpleasant (in fact, awful) future in response to the fact that his diet is not "Working." That is something he really wants to avoid.
If all he did was scare himself with that awful future, it could quickly become something oppressive. And, like everyone else, he will want to get away from that unpleasantness, and may do so by dumping the diet. Instead, Lenny reminds himself of the future he does want. This gives him something to go toward. This not only supports feelings such as hope, inspiration and determination, but it also provides a direction for his efforts (and those efforts have already been specified as keeping to the diet. The unpleasant future creates a subjective experience of wanting to get away from the unpleasantness. That creates a wide range of possible responses: indulgent eating, going to sleep, giving up the diet, and so on. It is like wanting only to get out of town; no matter where else you go, at least you will be out of that town. But of course, you could wind up in another awful town. By recapturing the future he wants, Lenny is selecting the town he will go to. The unwanted future provides the impetus to move, the wanted future provides the worthwhile direction.
Even having the direction of that future may not be enough, however. It is still the future, something far from the present. Often people feel that they have gone so far off their diet that the future is suddenly as remote as it ever was, the task of getting there feels overwhelming, and they give up. Lenny, however, keeps his future within reach by reminding himself that "I am one or two meals/steps away from getting back on track." This creates the experience that what he needs to do to be making the future come true is something relatively small and well within his grasp. (This is the same sequence of cause-effects captured in his Belief Template: "Maintain focus and discipline → Working → I can have the life I want to have, rather than the one I don't want to have.")
He supports this renewed experience of the string of cause-effects to his future by feeling stronger, and then finally goes back to following his diet. But he does not return to where he "left off." Obviously, he had been slipping in some way or to some degree in following his diet regimen; otherwise it would still be "Working." So he returns to the focus and discipline of the diet (including the weighing of portions, timing of meals, etc.), which simultaneously reminds him of what he needs to do and ensures that he gets back to feeling energetic, conscious and clear (satisfying his Criterion). And this then reinforces the causal connections between these things, as well as providing him with a growing sense of control.
Lenny has no Secondary Operations for "Criterion not at all satisfied" or for "Criterion cannot be satisfied." Which makes sense. He can't afford to be in those situations. To be in a situation in which his diet is "not at all Working" or "cannot Work" is to be in a life-threatening situation. (Or at the very least, having to live on medications, which he really does not want to do.) So his experience is structured to keep him from getting to those critical points. Instead he has (1) a Test that is self-based and ongoing, providing him with always accessible and immediate feedback to which he can respond, and (2) a Secondary Operation that gets him quickly "back on track" before he is in a situation of his diet not "Working."
* * *
Strategies present experience as bits and pieces of behaviors (both internal and external) that come in and out of play as needed to satisfy the Criterion. All of this activity is happening in and through a body, however, and bodies are not bits and pieces. Reaching for a cup is not something that is done just by your arm; your whole body participates in that reaching (by, for instance, subtly shifting your center of balance in order to support your arm as it extends). Similarly, the perceptual, cognitive and behavioral activities that make up the more visible reach and grasp of an ability are themselves supported by an emotional state, and it is to that we turn in the next essay.
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