2.5 The Implications of Strategies.
One way to talk about strategies is to suggest that they are, in many ways, like using a telephone. Representational systems (both of internal and external orientation) are like the digits on the telephone keyboard. The way we sequence and order the activity of these representational systems leads us to different outcomes, just as the use of different combinations of numbers on the phone will get us different localities and people.
A telephone number, like a strategy, is a means to access resources. One must, of course, select the appropriate number to reach the appropriate resource. If we want to call an ambulance, find out about repairing a car, order musical equipment or make reservations for dinner, we must know which numbers to use. Changing or mixing up one digit leads to an entirely different outcome. Some places have more than one telephone number, and it will be possible to dial several different sequences to reach them. Others will have one number and one number only.
To contact the appropriate party long distance, it is necessary to prefix the number we are attempting to reach with an area code sequence of digits. So it is with strategies — every step in the strategy, and the eventual outcome, is dependent on the steps that have come before. In certain contexts individuals and groups may need to prefix their operations or strategies with other actions or representations as a necessary preparation toward securing the outcome they desire or need. If they do not test for certain important conditions in the beginning of the strategy before they have initiated some later operation they may run up against interference or blocks to achieving their outcome that could have been more easily dealt with earlier in the sequence. Some people and organizations get stuck in strategies similar to that of an individual who keeps punching only the last four digits of a seven–digit phone number and wonders why he keeps ending up with only the dial tone. Others may needlessly and inefficiently overprepare like the individual who uses the area code for telephone numbers in his own locality.
People may also fall into situations in which they forget about an important or appropriate strategy, or the representational sequence of a strategy, as one may forget a phone number or mix it up with numbers that they use frequently. Applying often used or highly valued strategies in contexts in which they are inappropriate is one of the most common difficulties people experience with strategies. Applying a habitual strategy in an inappropriate context would be like moving from California to Alabama then dialing your old California fire department number when you have a fire at your new home because it's the only number you know.
The well known Peter Principle in the business world, that people become promoted past their level of competence, is an example of what happens when a person is inflexible with his strategies. The strategies that will make a person successful at a lower level in a corporate hierarchy may be inappropriate for the tasks that confront that person when he is promoted. A good strategy for managing people in a face–to–face situation may be a poor strategy for designing fiscal policy. If the individual who is being promoted does not have the variability to adapt his or her strategies to the new tasks created by the change in their job they will become incompetent.
A good example of a representational mismatch in a strategy as the result of applying a highly valued or habitual strategy in an inappropriate context is that of a woman, with whom one of the authors was working, who had trouble with mathematics because as a child she had learned arithmetic by coding numbers kinesthetically instead of visually. Each digit from zero to nine she represented to herself as a particular feeling that matched the way she felt about herself and other people in her environment at that time. For example, "four" had the feelings of a potential prodigy that was always being suppressed for some reason; "eight" was a particularly passive number and "seven" felt very energetic to her. "Nine" was a strong feeling that matched how she felt about her mother at the time — very powerful and protective.
As she performed various arithmetic operations, these feelings would combine with one another additively or multiply to form other feelings of differing degrees of complexity and intensity. As a result, she had always found mathematics fascinating but was unable to become adept at it. For instance, she encountered difficulty in adding certain numbers together because the feelings were not compatible, and she would have to count by ones on her fingers to get the answer.
When she began to mature, her relationships and feelings changed, and her sense of particular numbers changed with them. In later years she couldn't understand why working with numbers often made her feel greatly perplexed. This strategy seriously interfered with her professional life until she began working with one of the authors to develop a new strategy for arithmetic that substituted internal visualization of the digits.
This example has its parallels in many kinds of learning situations, including how we develop personal relationships with friends, family members, business and professional associates and so on. Troublesome behaviors like phobic responses, losing one's temper, jumping to conclusions and many of those behaviors we call "bad habits" are examples of how we may generalize strategies that are or were appropriate and adaptive in certain past or present contexts into situations in which they become inappropriate. Quite often people don't incorporate into these contextually problematic strategies an adequate test to indicate when it is appropriate to operate with the strategy in question. Rather, such persons typically find themselves suddenly involved in their responses, too late to change their behavior. These individuals need more appropriate and adequate operations in their repertoire of choices to be able to deal resourcefully with life situations.
A good example of how a representational system which serves as an appropriate testing mechanism in some situations may become mismatched for a particular task is found in the behavior of ants. The most highly developed representational system of ants, as with most insects, is the olfactory sense — the information in this sense tends to preempt the ant's other sensory input. Dead ants, for instance will be groomed and treated by other workers as if they were still alive for a day or two until chemical decomposition products accumulate and stimulate the workers to drag the corpse to the refuse pile outside the nest. The crumpled posture and complete immobility of the dead ant will by themselves produce no response in the other ants. When other innanimate objects or even living worker ants are daubed with chemicals from decomposed ants they are immediately carted off to the dead pile as well, despite the struggling of the living ants. Live workers will climb down from the refuse pile and return to the nest only to be dragged back to the pile over and over again until the scent of death is finally worn off.
Incredible as the above example may seem to some of you readers, we have found counterparts almost as striking in human behavior when people refuse to change highly valued but inappropriate test criteria.
One of the authors once worked with a woman who was consistently verbally and physically abused by her husband. She had intended to leave the relationship after each incident (which were getting more and more violent) but her husband would always buy her something or do something to make up with her so she wouldn't go. After a few days or weeks, however, her husband would again become violent and the pattern would repeat itself much to the dismay of the unhappy and confused woman. After listening to the woman's description of her problem the author told her a story that he had been told as a child. The story was about a man who worked in a saw mill. The man was in one part of the mill stacking some freshly cut boards when he suddenly heard a terrible cry coming from the other room. He immediatly rushed in the other room to investigate and came across one of his co–workers standing by an enormous circular saw. The co–worker was clutching his hand and in great pain, and had obviously just severed a finger from his left hand. The man who had just entered the room ran up to him exclaiming, "Oh my God, what happened?" To which the other responded, "Well I was just reaching for that board like this and OUCH … THERE GOES ANOTHER ONE!"