It’s a real shame you’re not going to be at the Advanced Therapeutic Specialist track. You’ll be sorely missed.

With regard to the kind of tests I’m talking about above, It’s less about verbal statements and more about what-has-to-be-true and this can occur simultaniously as you’re interacting with the client. Remeber though that this isn’t just about client work. The same principles and structures can be applied to many other types of work also.

Richard sometimes tells a story about a time when he was selling a car. A guy comes in with his 4 kids and want’s to buy a 2 seater sports car. I don’t know if you’ve heard this story but there’s something in there that could direct a persons attention towards a way of working that takes into account more about the person than is initially asked for.

I mentioned the topic of depression before so i’ll continue to use that example for as long as it seems of use
Lets suppose for a moment that the first peice of architecture that you’re going to build is one where the client feels at ease. So you might ask yourself the question “What kinds of things will be true (what can i test for) that will let me know this first peice of architecture is doing what i expect”. You might come up with multiple tests at this point which could include the clients shoulders relaxing, more blood flow to the face and neck, deeper breathing, slower eye movement patterns, relaxation of the under eye, a deeper sitting position…and so forth.

So here you know that you’ve already got 6 tests that you’ve already set up that right now, fail. The question you’ll be asking yourself at this point is “What can i architect that passes as many of these tests in one fell swoop”. Now, what I’m describing here is something that many people do naturally already. It’s not that this is so different, but what makes it different is the idea that you’re tracking what you do as you do it.
There may be a point at which when working with the client, you expect all of these previous tests to still pass, and yet they don’t. This is a good indication that something happened with another peice of architecture which did something to something you previously built.

It’s very similar to the way bridges are built. You can build the foundations, you can insert the rods and sement the whole lot together so that you have a base to work from, you can put in the struts and the bolts and the bars and everything can stand up just fine.
At each stage of bridge building you’d have resistence and pressure tests on each of the supporting platforms both under and above ground so that at each stage in the development you can see how well the bridge is holding together. Problems with bridges usually occur when some part of the bridge is too rigid to cope withe the environment or too slack that it ends up pulling down the rest of the structure as it sways. The idea that you can put sensors in to different parts of the bridges supports and measure at each point in the building process, how each previous peice is responding, to the continued changes in both the bridge and the environment is a clear sign that the architect knows what he’s expecting otherwise the date being presented too him would be lost in the void somewhere.

The other beautiful thing about bridge building is that before any work is started, simulations of each step of the building process are run and computed in order to determine (calculate) what else might also be true.

Now the things I’m talking about here could seem quite techy or small chunk and that’s sometimes what happens when you take a process that occurs in a matter of milliseconds and you slow it down enough to write a whole article about it so that you can begin to look at other experiences and notice how this structure will enable you to demolish, architect, build and install new structures that enable people to do things in ways they never thought possible.

Who’d have thought 30 years ago that it’s be a reality to build a high rise office block almost entirely out of glass and in the shape of a girkin (pickle)?

That’s the thing with architrcture though. One day it’s only possible to build square buildings out of square bricks, the next day you discover you can build round buildings out of flat glass. What’s next?

This is part of the reason I love the work Gabe is doing, Eric is doing, Chris is doing and coaches like Jenny Waller are doing. Pushing the boundaries of what we think we know is possible and finding out that on the other side of all of this, there is so much more.

I think we’re only just scratching off the paint that’s on the very tip of the ice berg.

Eric:

Thank you for your comments and thanks for the correction on the TOTE model credit. I’m looking forward to seeing you in 10 days time. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Here’s to more learning and discovering a whole heap of things we didn’t know about before.

Love, Jamie

My own mapping of global structures includes something I call ‘operational assumptions’. This is a concept I came up with to help me generate characters in stories, and realised emerged from the way I explore non-fictional people…

An operational assumption is one of a person’s key game rules in life. Depending on the person they’ll vary in chunk size and other respects, but for instances could include ’see how someone else does it before having a go myself’, ‘if it feels alright to do, it probably is’, and ‘look at the financial implications’.

Where it gets interesting is when you realise that people have a number of operational assumptions working simultaneously. And that the interaction of those…filters, beliefs, presuppositions, whatever…creates new behaviours, possibilities, and blockages. For instance, what happens when someone whose operational assumptions include ‘British is best’ and ‘time is money’ realises that a foreign car runs more cheaply than a UK built one? Or when someone running ‘change is good’, ‘never own more than you can fill a taxi with in ten minutes’ and ‘approach love with caution’ gets involved with a potential partner who they know wants to settle down? You can speculate quite a bit about the possibilities there, which are modified when you take into account the operational assumptions of the partner in question, and so on.

This way of thinking is a fast and dirty way of spotting what amount to the heuristics that people live by. And the questions that their interactions raise, are — I find — of value in, to use Jamie’s metaphor, creating suitable architecture for successful evolution.

As an IT man myself, I dig the way you think. There’s lots of rich stuff in your brilliant post.

When I think about tests, I think criteria. (Not to be confused with hierarchy of criteria.) I mean criteria as in, “what boxes do I have to tick for this person?”, or, put another way, “what evidence criteria am I testing for?”.

When I think evidence, I think of the question, “How will you know things are better for you?”

Is what you’re proposing along the same lines as designing your work around the ‘criteria’ (the “how will you know”?) as opposed to the ‘outcome’ (the “what do you want?”)?

The other brilliant thing I get from your post is something I’ve also been getting from Eric and Gabe’s posts, and something that’s been increasingly on my mind since I first learned about the Advanced Therapeutic Specialist track.

That is: that ‘outcomes’ are potentially just pieces in a bigger structure and it’s that whole structure we need to think about.

Much to my great regret – Chris knows knows how great! – I can’t be with you on the upcoming Advanced Therapeutic Specialist to learn more about this. I am very disappointed. Not least because it’d be a chance to work with people like you again, as well as Gabe and Eric.

(I’m hoping the event will happen again some time.)

Anyway, my feelings about missing the event aside, if we shift the context from ‘outcome’ to ‘whole structure’ – and from ‘outcome oriented’ to ‘test criteria oriented’ – that, to me, suggests the question “How will you know your life is better?” as opposed to “How will you know you’re getting your outcome?”

My guess is, though, that would be too “big chunk” a question to get a structured list of criteria. Or would it? I’m only playing it through in my head, I haven’t tested it.

Either way, how would you involve the client in the process of choosing good test criteria for a ‘whole structure’ shift without hitting them with a question that may be too universal for them to answer specifically?

Incidentally, I’m taking a chance on looking like a fool with some of my questions – as I sometimes don’t get things first time round and maybe I haven’t here – but I’m prepared to take the chance because I know you’ll forgive me if I do and at least I’ll learn something if I do!

Cheers

A lot for us, including me, to think about. Makes me think of “Solution Focused Therapy” in the first instance – but you present some intriguing and provocative new elements – as is your (admirable) style, so I’ll be giving it a more than a passing thought.

For the record, the TOTE model came from the collaboration of three bright, hard-working, and innovative gents, and NLP borrowed it from them. The full credit is:

Miller, George A, Galanter, Eugene, and Pibram, Karl (1960) Plans and the Structure of Behavior, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, NY.

My other first reaction to your post is to say that I’ve always internally asked (about clients): “Does their whole life work?” as opposed to “What’s your outcome?” – the question the early Grinder limitingly pointed people towards, and which limits weren’t entirely overcome by the “well-formed outcome” frame that Dilts and Epstein modelled out of Leslie Cameron-Bandler in 1978-79 (and what a character-revealing point it is that she was concerned with the clients’s whole life prospects, and Grinder wasn’t).

I asked that question because of the TA “life script” idea. Eric Berne, Claude Steiner, and Jacqui Lee Schiff were pretty sharp cookies too.

I’d also add topical, that the “Advanced Therapeutic Specialist” work of Gabe Guerrero – with a workshop happening 10 days from now – covers a lot of the “problem space” you describe, and addresses many of the same concerns. But since you, yourself, have seen him work, you already know how good it’s going to be.

Eric.