Some assembly required

Now that you have begun the journey, relax. This Indiana Jones’  facsimile is going to be a happy, highly satisfying trek to a joyful destination. We have not gone to all the trouble to operationalize this Plan B stuff for MitMs just for our ego. You are encouraged to be skeptical and critical. We strive to pass your QA standards, not ours. Since the OD challenge is always evolving, there is always room for entropy extraction.

The stage you’re in now is the preparatory stage in the portal, getting appropriately provisioned to make the trek from Plan A to Plan B, from OD to PS³. The metamorphosis will not take place until the platform is in place ready to support your weight and your task actions.

The “Front Line Leader Program^©,” FLLP, that ushers the metamorphosis is not a training program. It is a joint MitM adventure in building a better way of life. The paramount goal is MitM psychological success. It just so happens that all advances in psychological well-being are attended with increases in productivity – the other way around being emphatically and categorically impossible. Happy people instinctively drive high productivity. Unhappy people can only  drive to despair. Changes in productivity follow changes in the context of work.

Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. Viktor E. Frankl

In the beginning, …

Since everything in the scope of this website is about social systems, start with a trustworthy definition of social system. Get rid of any notions that a social system is a group of people.

The “system” in social system is an invisible network of entangled minds, nothing more. Since it has no mass, it is not subject to the ordinary constraints of leak, lag and friction of tangible matter.  The natural laws of system and network dynamics apply but the universal laws of the material realm as science knows them, especially the entropy law, do not.

The psychologically-based “system” in social system is the prime mover of the mechanisms of action we observe in everyday operational-reality social intercourse. The psychological energy that gives life to the system is channeled by its environment. In OD, Plan A, the primary context ingredient is infallible (delusional) groupthink. In Plan B, the context is implementation efficacy.

The types of syndromes of hierarchical dysfunction are strongly influenced by the neurotic styles of their top managers – paranoid, compulsive, dramatic, depressive, and schizoid. Expressed another way, organizational performance mirrors the psychodynamic neurotic condition of its supreme authorities.

Going from Plan A to Plan B takes away from those in authority. It reduces status, prestige and security in the subconscious of those in command, threatening their self-images and giving rise to resistance or defense mechanisms. There are many kinds of resistances.

Even though the subconscious minds, the nodes of the network, are entangled in the social system, its communication traffic obeys Shannon’s Laws of communication. When the social network consists of eight or more nodes, it becomes vulnerable to the mathematical physics of desynchronization. The same law that synchronizes firefly flashing in the wild can throw a system of identical nodes, like a social system, out of synch and into chaos. This law accounts for many of the unforeseen system crashes that regularly occur on internet-based systems where everything was running smoothly as designed and no external disturbances occurred that could have caused it. This chaos is an inside job.

The trick to desynchronization chaos prevention is to intentionally disturb the system and bring it back into harmony, on a regular basis. In Plan B practice, the unending emphasis on change for the better does the job. The law of system desynchronization also explains why a many-node social system focused on maintaining status quo, Plan A, is innately self-destructive. When the organization implodes, no one will have any idea about the actual cause.

To really understand organizational behavior, so you can predict it, the interaction between psychological functionalities and mathematical physics cannot be ignored.  Willpower, determination, and leadership have nothing to do with it. Elaboration of the definition of system in social system is provided later on this page.

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye. Carlos Castaneda

Hyper Learning is not Training

One key to the wholesale failure of conventional training programs is zero responsibility for results. In the typical case, a highly-credentialed specialist, indifferent to the MitM role, delivers a packaged lecture on his specialty – and his obligation ends there. You have been through this drill many times yourself. Having been “trained” to tears for decades, we know how ineffective conventional training practices are. We don’t use them. Only hyper-learning practices get the transmutation done.

The joint adventure takes place in hyper-learning episodes that feature silence-breaking, independent MitM testing of revealed concepts in their local operational reality, and unrestricted discussion of results. Because if you’re going to get to PS³ at all, you’re going to get there in a tear and hyper-learning is a sprint requirement. Most MitMs advance past the inflection point before episode 3 of season 1. At this time 6 seasons of six stand-alone episodes each have been delivered and season seven production is underway. Episodes are one month apart and seasons are one year apart. The times between are spent testing introduced concepts in the operational reality and measuring realized benefits.

As you may have already guessed, the MitMs-in-process call episodes one and two “shock and awe.” Feedback is used for continuous improvement of the repertoire, of course. Season one has been upgraded a dozen times. Keeping tabs on the inflection-point crossing dates tells us how we’re doing.

The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy, man’s tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the organic and human life, the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature – the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. Carl Rogers

In the FLLP, the program is run by a veteran MitM senior who openly takes responsibility for your hyper-learning success, called an interventionist. It is a personalized affair based on mutuality, where your needs matter and you contribute to the satisfaction of various concerns of the other MitMs in the program with you. The “interventionist” spends quality time with you, one on one in your work scene, before and during a season of episodes. Learning takes place both ways.

How does the interventionist/practitioner know when he’s being effective? When the MitM in process volunteers to tell about, during a one-on-one encounter, the positive impact the learning process is having on his home life. This unsolicited commentary marks the top reason we’re in this audacious FLLP enterprise – transcendence.

When the trip is over and Plan B has settled in for the long haul, you will be shown details of a gambit that will resolve old scores and level everything in the upper social hierarchy. More about the gambit is included later on and in the companion books. Meanwhile, consider that the taking of responsibility for implementation success can only be legitimate with the individual with the design, assign, and implement role. All else is bogus.

The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well. Alfred Adler

The adventure awaiting MitMs is like no other. Echoing Alice in Wonderland, you will see the surreal in your operational reality. You will witness people you know change attitude right in front of your eyes. The MitM trek through wonderland, called M², combines the bizarre experience of Alice with Dorothy’s riotous trek to Oz. It stays exciting after M² is over. Change is the only constant.

Brother MitM veterans take you to a perspective on life you have never been to before. They give you ground-penetrating radar for seeing bunny-hole reality you’ve never noticed. Veterans of M² processing take responsibility for attaining psychological success to MitMs in process, always building with you from what you already possess.

The FLLP is unique in human history in two significant ways. The class and the interventionist make the trip together intact. The interventionist learns what works best for each “class” because he gets feedback from the same MitMs from every episode he conducts. This relationship of long-term mutual trust in hyper-learning has no precedent. You can audition an episode of beginners and an episode with veterans and see the distinguishing differences for yourself.

MitM takeaways:

• No one ever labelled you a MitM. You named yourself a MitM.
• Regarding organizational prosperity, you already have the most powerful role for that end in the hierarchy.
• You contain everything necessary for a successful, profitable adventure. If you didn’t have what it takes, you wouldn’t call yourself a MitM.
• The network of minds that distinguishes a social system from a bunch of people has no mass. It is unknowable. The brain has so many elements, its operation will always be inexplicable.
• You are unencumbered by groupthink.
• You never require permission or “buy-in” to act. You have autonomy.
• The proffered concepts are generic. The tools work 100% of the time, on the spot. Addictive.
• The M² adventure is a sprint, not a marathon. As you will experience while still in the portal, by testing novel concepts against your experience, benefits accrue immediately. No inertia.
• No trust and faith in the portal people are necessary or requested. Believe your test results and you’ll advance.
• Your success in this adventure is guaranteed. Your brother MitM veterans will not let you fail.
• Before you leave the portal, your resentment at having been abused as a MitM will start turning to pride as vector.
• The platinum rule spotlights the flaw in the golden rule placed there by the aristocratic class.
• The state of affairs in any social system can be determined accurately and independently by blood chemistry (hormones).
• Predicting social trajectory becomes easy.
• You have been carrying around all the ingredients for dealing with social dysfunction the whole time.
• You have been brainwashed and sold a bill of goods to disenfranchise yourself from your birthright, your I-rights.

Since social roles are fixed by natural law, non-negotiable, your subconscious mind had to be duped by socialization to change your take on your authentic role yourself. As the record shows, invariant human nature and standard social conditioning has done yeoman’s service in performing this atrocity on humanity. Accordingly, MitMs, like us, cannot fully trust anyone who is not a MitM. All M² does is silence-break and build with what is already there.

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement. Alfred Adler

You end up with a comprehensive benefit package – with no risk and nothing to buy. The fact you think it’s too good to be true attests to the effectiveness of social conditioning, not to the “magic”of M². While everyone enters the portal in psychological tatters with society having set you up for failure, incorrigibly socialized, your comrade MitMs of the portal are determined to see that does not happen. You’ve never been offered a deal like this one and only brother MitMs could possibly have arranged it.

Learning after the Portal contains modules of concepts and tools that will help you advance as expeditiously as possible. You will find these modules immediately useful in their own right. In the end, all this module learning will fit together to keep your self-image mosaic congruent with reality. The next module up in the portal, as mentioned above, is “system”:

1. The laws and principles of “system” are MitM critical success factors
   1. “System” and “dynamics” are inseparable
2. The concept of “system” is aggressively ignored by all ranks in a social system except MitMs. System think is the one functionality excluded in all. Why? System think in implementation ruins infallibility defenses. It asks too many questions that sprawl outside of discipline fences and ceilings.

System think provides an opportunity for the MitM to get far ahead of everyone else – and quickly. System think is a trump card that wins over any component-think, delusion-speak position.  You will learn that 80% of the crises you faced in OD, events that demand your attention, never arise in PS³. The implication? The effort you witness in OD is on matters that are exclusive to and signatures of OD.

Before a concept and its toolsmithy is deployed, the information about the module is hung on the following rack. These frameworks are handy for checking if something is being overlooked when adding the module into the system. These checklists are provided to show you there is a working framework of M². They are not self-explanatory. Their derivation comes after the portal and into the FLLP.

Our science … is based on common sense. Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world. Alfred Adler

The Front End

1. Goal specification dynamics
   1. Responsibility/autonomy
2. Goal-attainment-appropriate methodology
3. Audience design
   1. Clients
   2. Not-clients
   3. Stakeholders
   4. Beneficiaries of success
4. Principles of implementation
   1. Transparency
   2. Natural law platform
   3. Do no harm
   4. Penetrations
      1. System dynamic principles
   5. Workforce context design
      1. I-rights
      2. Personalization
      3. Stop rules

Module checklist

1. Module action
2. Uses, designated applications
3. Contraindications
   1. Precautions
4. Implementation vectors, MoA
5. Side effects
6. Kinetics of beneficial effects MoA
   1. Self-sustainability
      1. Half-life
   2. Demonstrable
7. Interactions with other system elements
8. Implementation considerations
   1. Assess
   2. Evaluate
      1. Indications of success
      2. Indications of failure
   3. Inform
9. Stop rules: abort, jettison, upgrade

The system in social system

As defined earlier, all human collectives, from partnerships to empires, are invisible, massless networks of entangled minds. Since social systems are so central to our work, elaboration is appropriate.

The superstructure of all social systems consist of two wireless networks of entangled human minds anchored at the MitM – and nothing else. Because of entanglement, you live this feature of the network every day. All other definitions of social system fail the test of experience, i.e., they induce fallacious assumptions.

Having no mass, the wireless network does not accumulate entropy. The delusion network of the subconscious operates under a subset of the laws of Nature that includes “system,” “communication”, and “dynamic stability,” but not inertia, friction, gravity and the conservation laws.

It is the free choice of every social system to be prosperous and happy or be dysfunctional and insecure. The choice made by the network determines the arrangement and alignment of the fundamental principles of network and system in application. The principles cannot be changed; they cannot be defied; at least not in this universe.

After the either/or system choice is made and subsequently implemented, becoming material, social system dynamics are ruled by all the laws of the universe – the law of experience itself. For reasons that will be discussed later, once the system ideology choice is materialized, it locks everybody in but the MitMs for the duration. The MitMs are beholding to no groupthink.

The result of all this bifurcation is that delusion-speak people cannot admit the operational reality of implementation-speak. They are terrorized by a material reality they do not understand and material problems in survival they cannot solve. Aristocrats learn they cannot continue without effective problem-solvers who, by definition, must be impervious to their delusions. When that statement makes sense to you, you’re on the path to enlightenment.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor E. Frankl

Your first thought about this is likely to be: “If the social system can freely choose between engaging prosperity or dysfunction modes, why would any social system in its right mind deliberately choose dysfunction?” Since social systems have no minds apart from those of their members, choosing OD is the heart of the MitM dilemma. It’s how, exactly, you became a MitM. Charles Darwin raised that question 150 years ago.

Getting an answer to that question required solving the OD madness first. Choosing dysfunction is an instance of the Abilene Paradox. It is just one example of the irrational, counterproductive social behaviors attributable to the network of delusions. Your subconscious mind finds nothing strange about the situation at all.

The fact that business as usual invariably scaffolds-up the organization into dysfunction, called plan A, has been the crux of our efforts for decades. Notice the “system” aspect of OD obvious in 1902.

That this shopping list of workforce conditions, widely distributed to the public, has endured for over a century is highly instructive. It shows that whatever practices the head shed used to create this miserable working environment in 1902 are alive and flourishing today. Some items on the list have retreated while new ones have been added. The bottom-line result is the same – OD, Plan A.

…nobody can stand truth if it is told to him. Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable. Frederick Salomon Perls

What the social system does is its purpose, POSIWID

There is a generally-irresistible urge for a simple humanistic explanation of social dysfunction. The statistical favorite uses the five deadly sins of Biblical fame: envy, jealousy, vanity, lust, and greed. These so-called flaws in personal character are attributed to the leadership and that somehow accounts fully for the sinful results.

Social norms include the delusion that a simple explanation exists for everything. Groupthink holds therefore that it is incumbent on the promoters of the sociotechnology to condense any complexity into a sound bite that conveys full knowledge. Denial of intrinsic complexity is a hallmark of the ruling class. Take the maxim from Einstein as read, “State the issue as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

When you do learn the mechanisms of action (MoA) that gravitate all things social to dysfunction, you will have nothing to justify the choice still. The “human nature” network of minds builds dysfunctional organizations in several ways. As the record attests, changing out the roster changes nothing. To understand the MoA of action of organizational dysfunction (OD), a dynamical process, it is necessary to grasp a few fundamental principles of networks and system dynamics. Dignified the process is not.

The “fun” in all dysfunctional social systems exhibits and reflects Nature’s punishment for attempts to defy Her laws. That is why looking at an organizational chart tells you nothing about how anyone on it is going to behave. Your second thought about this is likely to be: “Why on earth would educated, intelligent and otherwise law-abiding people deliberately and routinely attempt to defy laws of Nature?” The fact such is a norm of society does nothing to recommend it. You can send messages around your network but you can’t send messages to its control center. There isn’t any.

The most bothersome plight of MitMs is the fact that OD ends up with no one left to answer for the human casualties of OD. The lack of legitimate responsibility for implementation success was fully discernable at the outset. It’s like asking you to believe the wreckage pile formed spontaneously by divine intervention. The elimination of responsibility for outcomes, while no accident, means that much of your effort has been wasted. Your self-image as an effective contributor to society takes a hit.

It’s a lot easier to make the case for the ubiquity of OD than it is to explain why OD, plan A, is freely chosen over its sure-fire happy alternative, plan B. Once you get comfortable with the idea of network and throw your wrong notions about social systems away, you can move forward in dealing with the mess. There is seldom a single, simple reason the network of unknowable minds acts as it does.

Foremost, exactly how the network decides and acts inside your head is incomprehensible. The only leverage possessed by the network to change your behavior is changing your social network status. MitMs laugh at the hollow threat because they’re already marginalized.

By now, one might think humanity at large would have noticed the helplessness of management to prevent OD and to do anything with its given authority other than making things worse. Management is nursed on the false premise that authority and power are one and the same thing. Once you understand the head-on collision of delusion-speak as totally incompatible with implementation-speak and watch the Tower of Babel play out in front of you, the rest is ho hum.

The fact is that there is nothing wrong with most of us that a good, clean change of attitude and some new skills wouldn’t fix. Richard Bandler

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