THE MAGIC OF
SELF-REGULATION:

For my Friends in the Omicron Studies Groups

Preface

(Note: Throughout this book, numbers in parentheses are references to items in the Appendix.)

At the heart of the Omicron Orientation is the self-regulating person in the self-regulating organization in the self-regulating universe. Whatever else it is, life is interdependent. We are all in it together. Every cell and tree and person and organization. The universe is collaborative.

And the creation of this theory is a collaborative process. This book is one of a series of Omicron books that are produced through the collaborative efforts of a group of thirty members of our Omicron Studies Groups, together with a number of other members of the TORI and Omicron communities.

As the author of this particular book, I take full responsibility for my unique perceptions of the theory. I am excited by it. We are on to something special. We join each other in this spiritual journey and common mission: the creation of a special theory of life and matter.

This is a book about organizations. Organizations are in turmoil, in the splendor of change, in the process of discovering themselves. Like many others in this transformative period, we Omicron people are creating new organizational forms. We are looking at the organizations we inhabit, looking at them with fondness, seeing them as live organisms, as communities, as the media for our entry into the new age. It is important that we live in harmony with the organizations we create.

This is a book directed toward having a dialogue with managers. Every person is a manager. The parent, the minister, the gardener, the grocer. As a person, I manage my own life. I create and manage my environment. Mostly, in this book, I talk about managing the enterprise--the center of our American culture--like it or not. Our culture is a business culture. Never has this been more clear. Can we create humane, livable, nurturing, self-regulatory business organizations that express the highest spiritual values of our age? I think so. Please read on.

If I look at an organization and ask myself, "How can I manage this enterprise?" I get answers that look something like the classic management textbooks. The orienting question leads me to ask such follow-on questions as these: How can I control processes and people? How can I motivate people to work? How can I command loyalty of my employees? On and on.

However, if I should ask such a question as, "How can I create an organization that will manage itself?" I am likely to come up with quite different answers (24, 31).

How I orient myself toward the organization, particularly as shown in the questions I ask, will determine what I do as a manager or as a planner.

The more experience a manager has in a classic organization, the more easily the manager falls into the managerial trap. As the wife of a successful manager in one of America's largest corporations said to me, her husband's primary consultant, "What he does is come home and try to manage us. Managing is a bigger fix than any drug."

One of my most vivid experiences with the classic managerial trap occurred when I organized a group experience for upper middle management of a large industrial corporation, as part of a five-day management development program in the company. There were sixty managers. We divided them into two random groups of thirty each. Each group was to be a company that produced greeting card poetry for market. We provided the same buyer for each company and carefully explained to the total group of sixty the simple and clear criteria for producing acceptable poetry. The task was an interesting one that each of them could do. Each group was to have 60 minutes to produce the product. Company One was to have thirty workers who sat at tables in a large room and independently wrote poetry, taking each finished product to the buyer and getting credit. Company Two was to take as long as they wished, up to a full day, to organize themselves for the task. They could devise any work organization or task arrangement that they felt would produce the most buyable items. Company Two took six hours to organize the task. The more they got into the task, the more complicated the organization became, taking on a form very similar to the company to which all sixty managers belonged. They had supervisors, quality control people, liaison managers, a general overall regional manager, a selling agent, and an accountant to keep track of the productivity of each worker. They set up proper channels for messages, for requests, and for taking the product to market. Each company took one hour to produce the product. The unmanaged company produced 344 items, an average of about 11.5 units per worker for the thirty workers in the company. The managed company produced 169 items, an average of about 9.4 items per worker. They came up with eighteen workers and twelve managers, in the "company" organization.

Note that in the above illustration the supervised workers averaged 9.4 items per worker, and the unsupervised workers averaged 11.5 items. The total group of sixty managers took over a full day discussing the data and working with the implications of the experience. They interviewed the workers and found a number of familiar examples of oversupervision: resentment of being "told" by the supervisor, perceived waste of time when supervisors discussed the quality of the poems with the worker, distractions provided by the supervisors who felt they "had to do something" useful, annoyance at being "watched," resentment of being given advice which the worker felt to be in error, and so on.

Videotapes had been made of the planning and of the two one-hour working groups. The managed company had three supervisors, each of which watched over six workers. As the whole group watched the supervisory behavior on the tapes, there were several bursts of laughter. One said, "The supervisors look and act just like supervisors look in our plants!" Even though there were no supervisors in the upper-management group, they had all either been a supervisor at one time or had seen a supervisor work.

I have tried this design in working with several large companies. Even though at times I have warned the planning groups not to overmanage the operation, in each case I have found similar general results: Each of the managed companies has been greatly overorganized and overmanaged (42, 58). The un-managed companies consistently outproduce the managed companies, usually by astonishing amounts. The average score of the un-managed workers was higher than the scores of the managed workers, with two exceptions. In two companies the group that organized the "managed" company allowed people who liked to write poetry to volunteer for a worker spot. In each of these cases, the volunteers outperformed the un-managed workers.

What can we conclude from these data? I'm not sure, and I would like to come back to these issues several times during the course of the book. In my own mind, I am fairly sure about some conclusions that I have seen borne out by impressive data from a variety of sources. I started consulting with organizations in 1941. After 41 years of consulting with religion, therapy, and law, at various levels, I have the strong impression that the most critical organizational disease in America is overmanagement. For similar reasons, both labor and management "featherbed" in their work. I know also from experience that when companies look at the hard data on this issue, they are able to reduce the number of management people, often by large numbers, and they are able to change the management behaviors that are dysfunctional. We know a lot about such management behaviors (42, 48).

One useful concept that seems to make a huge difference to the effectiveness of management people is a change in the attitude towards self-regulatory functions. The effective manager learns to move from an attitude that produces the question, "How can I plan, organize, and control this operation?" to the attitude that asks the question, "How can I behave in a way that enhances the self-regulation of my operation?" I have consulted with organizations in every sector with this concept in mind and have seen dramatic changes in functional effectiveness.

This book is concerned with two major issues:

1. How do managers behave in practical situations in ways that enhance self-regulatory behavior (6)? Truly emergent self-regulatory systems (managed or unmanaged) are associated with proactive behavior, high energy, a sense of dedication to a corporate mission, high trust, high creativity, feelings of adventure and discovery, high artistry in work, and collaboration (56).
2. How do we create work environments and organizational "structures" that enhance self-regulatory behavior and thus reduce the need for "management" of the operations (44, 61, 71)?

Particularly in the last two decades, we have made great strides in understanding both of these issues, in changing management theory and practice, and in understanding the collaborative design of work environments.

Each of these major issues is dealt with in this book. In Chapter 9, Managing for Self-Regulation, I have summarized my views on the first issue. In Chapter 12, Collaborative Environmental Design, I have summarized my view on the second issue.

The theory of self-regulatory management is summarized in Table 1, The Seven Critical Indices of Self-Regulatory Systems. Chapters 2 through 3 discuss the seven factors in order, one to each chapter.

Self-regulatory systems optimize the seven factors listed in the second column of Table 1. Left to themselves, without overmanagement, or with a minimum of management, people tend to be more collaborative, get in touch with the emergent flow of the system, focus upon discovery and experimentation, exhibit personal behavior, emphasize and enhance proactive behavior, stimulate superenergy and artistry, and develop a system-wide sense of corporate mission.

Left to themselves, under favorable environments, people learn to regulate themselves and create the conditions that optimize performance and productivity. These self-regulatory systems consistently outperform overmanaged systems, which are associated with the negative indices listed in column I of the table (59).

When assigned to "manage" a system, most managers respond by overmanaging their functions, particularly under top-down pressure, emergencies, or recession periods of economic slowdown. These pressure conditions are exactly when the system needs the strengths and positive outcomes of self-regulatory forces (48).

The volition of individuals, companies, organizations, and the universe is towards greater self-regulation, and towards the enhancing conditions listed in column 2 (49).

Exceptional managers, and managers with an enlightened autogenic theory, are likely to discover the behaviors and attitudes that enhance self-regulation. Given time and certain favorable conditions, all systems move towards self-regulation and away from the negative attitudes and behaviors listed in column I. Even simple experiments with self-regulation pay off in economic benefits, higher intrinsic motivations, and higher performance.

As indicated in the Preface, the emphasis in this book is upon business systems because of their significance in contemporary North America. Self-regulatory theory is equally applicable to other contemporary systems: the home, the church, the government, and education. In Chapter 11, I discuss very briefly the applications of the theory to these other systems.

The collaborative Omicron group of people constructing a self-regulatory theory are building on a 40-year investigation of the nature of self-regulatory systems carried on by many hundreds of people since 1943. In Chapter 13, The Omicron Orientation, I summarize the current state of the self-regulatory theory.

The significant developments over the 40-year period of research and development are the following:

1. The demonstration at Brigham Young University and Stanford University that autogenic forces for proactivity are created in small laboratory groups. In these "leaderless" groups, members show surprisingly strong tendencies to build proactive attitudes and behaviors. These experiments in the classroom were carried on from 1937 through 1946.
2. At Michigan State University, from 1946 through 1949, we carried on experiments which demonstrated that classrooms of 90 students or more could, without a teacher, "manage themselves," creating their own learning environments, with strong positive learning outcomes. Motivation was heightened in courses where students managed themselves.
3. At the University of Colorado, from 1949 through 1956, supported by a series of research grants from the Group Psychology Branch of the Office of Naval Research, we demonstrated that defense systems were the mediators for decrements in performance in overmanaged systems. Members increased "defensive behaviors" in overmanaged work groups. These defensive behaviors mediated poor performance. Defense reduction became a key concept in the emerging theory of self-regulation in persons and social systems. Several thousand students became part of these experiments with "leaderless" college classes.
4. Sponsored by the National Training Laboratories, the Office of Naval Research, and the Fels Group Dynamics Center in Newark, Delaware, from 1956 through 1964, we demonstrated that self-regulation was a significant determiner of personal and group therapy outcomes, effectiveness of management teams, and work-group systems. We discovered that proactivity (Chapter 6) and artistry (Chapter 7) were significant elements in the transformations that occur in systems that build their own regulatory forces.
5. At the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, from 1964 through 1967, we discovered that the "orientation toward discovery" (Chapter 4) was a significant element in such systems. These experiments were carried out in collaboration with the national YMCA, the national Methodist Church, and a number of business client systems.

Between 1967 and 1982, we have created a number of experimental organizational prototypes (6, 20, 24, 27, 31, 52) invented to test on a larger scale the applicability of self-regulatory theory to national and international organizations. TORI Associates was incorporated in 1969 as an innovation in large voluntary systems (46). It was clear that large non-residential communities could administer themselves without staff and management systems. The results have been dramatic and positive, but ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretation. These experiences have led to a five-year intern program in which 180 professionals participated in three-year, 31-day-a-year programs studying the applicability of Trust Level and Omicron theories to all forms of social systems (13,-46, 52). Growing out of this experiment came the TORI-Astron corporation, a continuing experimental program examining the usefulness of the expanding theory to business systems. As part of the activities of this corporation, the Omicron Institute was created. The 40 books and nine doctorates listed in Appendix A are largely the result of this innovation. The Omicron theory of self-regulatory systems is being created by the Omicron study groups and other members of TORI Associates and TORI-Astron corporation. The Omicron Series (the beginnings of which are listed in Appendix A) will describe the evolving theory.

The current state of self-regulatory theory is discussed in detail in the next seven chapters.

All forms of nature--plants, cells, animals, humans, organizations--seem to be able to compete and to collaborate. The literature in anthropology, biology, and psychology, particularly, is replete with discussions of the competition-cooperation dilemma. My strong impression in consulting with business is that survival goes to the most collaborative. The myth in business is that we "need to be competitive," meaning that we need to learn to build a collaborative system that produces super-quality products with high-energy people, working together in synergy. The essence of the operation is collaborative (50, 73).

Collaboration is self-regulation (31). Collaboration is an omnipresent, universal, definitive and essential characteristic of the universe. It is a definitive aspect of living, matter, experience and form.

Not only is no "man" alone, but no God, woman, flower, cell or form is alone. We are in it together. We need each other and we need all the other elements in the universe to survive. Interdependence is definitive.

Collaboration may be deliberate and planned. It may be involuntary, unconscious, and not within the awareness of any parties to the collaboration. Chemicals, processes, forms--all coexist, co-form, co-create each other. Everything is related to everything. The universe is a system, an interdependent process (30). Instances of collaborative systems are infinite: Flowers, rocks and soil in a garden. Workers, furniture and machines in a factory. Teachers, students, administrators, furniture and air in a classroom. Machines, personnel, plans, and enemies in a military force. Congregations, pulpits, ministers, sinners and revelations in a church (36, 37).

Yesterday I listened to the wife of a heart patient describe the open-heart surgery that her husband recently experienced. The elaborate collaborative system that was responsible for the successful operation was, first of all, an interdependent group. Present were anesthetists, a heart surgeon, interns who opened up the patient, observer surgeons that were ready to take over in any emergency, interns who closed up the patient, nurses who took care of vital functions, a variety of specialists who were dedicated to making the efforts of all members of the team successful. Each of the many persons involved in the operation was an essential, useful, vital part of the total procedure.

Similarly, yesterday's newspaper was filled with an account of the San Diego Chargers' football offensive unit which was supposedly the best ever developed in professional football. Again, each person involved was vital, useful, and devoted to making each of the others more effective.

The offensive unit of a modern football team is even more interdependent and complicated than open-heart surgery. Not only are the eleven active players involved in each . play, but so is a coaching staff that calls in plays or that may give signals while the play is in motion, or observers with telephones located far above the field to see things in perspective, trainers, physicians, and various other special personnel. This collaboration in the moment is only one highly visible aspect of the total collaboration, an effort which includes recruitment, bribery, planning, long-range training, strategy planning, salary negotiations, players' unions, player representatives, lawyers, financial staff., public relations, ticket sales, and multitudes of other people over many years who are involved in the preparation for the one key pass that might make the difference in the game score.

Included in the "collaboration" are intangible, spiritual, invisible, perhaps non-describable elements. Reputations, auras, gestures, vibrations, symbols, metaphors, pre-cognitions, magic, fears, confidence, attitudes, images-elements and aspects that may be larger in impact than that of the persons involved in the collaborative team.

Many and varied are the factors that sustain collaboration. Trust is basic. One is more apt to enter into an interdependent enterprise if one trusts the other members of the team, community, neighborhood, or society of which one is a member. Trust in the process of collaboration, that it will work, and that one's efforts will eventuate in productivity, better living, or other positive outcomes. 'Trust in the abilities and attitudes of other members of the collaborating group. Trust in one's own skills and abilities. The more reciprocal the trust, the more effective the collaboration.

Non-defensiveness is vital. Defensive persons are more likely to be manipulative, competitive, non-cooperative, anxious, protective, suspicious, controlling, and to engage in behaviors that make collaboration less possible and less effective.

Proactive persons are more apt to collaborate than reactive people. One reaches out to collaborate, doesn't pull back or hold off, takes responsibility for what happens, puts energy into the action, and is forward-looking rather than backward- (reaction) looking.

Courage makes for more active collaboration. The collaborator courageously takes a risk, assumes that others will chip into the action, exposes self to the unknown or unforeseen effects of risk-taking and joining. Fearful people hold back and don't assertively move into the collaborative relationship (41).

Vision and perspective enhance collaboration. It helps to see the big picture, to see things in perspective, to know what one needs to do to enhance the efforts of others, to have some clear notion of all of the forces of the situation.

A reality-oriented theory predisposes one to act collaboratively. The person with an adequate theory is aware of the tremendous advantage of collaboration, the necessity of interdependent action, the universality of collaborative metaphors, and the disruptive and dysfunctional effects of competitive relationships (73).

Person-oriented individuals are more apt to be collaborative than role-oriented ones. People who are secure, have high esteem, are comfortable with themselves, have a deep sense of uniqueness and self-ness, and have a full sense of person-hood are apt to collaborate with others rather than to compete with them. Competition is a sign of taking a role. Persons collaborate. Roles compete.

Persons who value harmony and flow are apt to collaborate with others to enhance the harmony and flow of the situation. Collaboration, in essence, is flow, requires a sense of the rhythm of nature, depends upon a sense of interdependence with other persons and processes (21).

There are many factors that keep people from entering into collaborative, interdependent relationships with the universe, the community, the company, the team, the marriage, the daily activities of living, and the body itself.

Feelings of inadequacy often lock people into competitive relationships with others, with the parts of one's own body, with imagined rivals, or with the imagined enemies in the environment. Lack of artistry and lack of fundamental excellence are forces that keep people from entering into collaborative relationships. Artists collaborate with other artists, but especially with their materials--with all of the factors in the situation. What makes an artist be exceptional is the ability to see all things in true perspective. Michaelangelo works with his marble. The photographer lives into his or her subject matter. The writer works with the characters in the novel, and does not fight with them. The artist does not push the river--does not compete with nature but joins it.

Defensiveness is fatal to collaboration. Fear breeds fear and leads to competition. The insecure need to win to prove themselves. The secure have little interest in winning. In the so-called win-win situation both participants lose. Winning is at best an illusory goal, and always dissipates in the winning or soon after the victory.

Orientations toward teaching, healing, training, or changing others are primary hindrances to collaboration. An ideal learning environment is a collaborative one in which all participants come to learn, not to teach each other. An environment for healing is best when co-authored, in which all participants discover how to live more fully and more abundantly. A person who collaborates does not "train" another person in attitudes, skills, information, or feelings.

Rewards and punishments destroy collaboration. If my intent is to reward you or to punish you, I do not co-author the situation with you. I am trying to influence you, change you, or teach you--not to be with you.

Cosmetic concerns militate against collaboration. Genuine collaboration is not a superficial, surface or cosmetic process. When we collaborate with each other, we are working or playing with significant issues: joy, achievement, being, satisfactions, artistry, worship, or other universals.

Power and hierarchical concerns are seldom associated with collaboration. A power or hierarchical relationship leads to dependency or counter-dependency, competition, obedience or disobedience--not to working with. Power is deeply associated with competition (42).

Isolation and withdrawal are often associated with lack of collaboration. Some concern with community, intimacy, or relationship is associated with the attitudes toward and skills involved in collaboration. Collaboration is a social process.

The inexperienced or harassed manager is likely to resort to induced competition as a temporary solution to the apparent difficulties of management. Punishment and competition have many similarities. Each may lead to temporary relief of symptoms. Each may seem successful at first. Each, on the surface, appeals to the Band-Aid manager. In each case, the underlying negative effects are massive and always present.

Like hard drugs, competition and punishment might well be outlawed in civilized societies. The temporary and surface effects of all three seem, often, to be positive. Such highs are temporary, illusory, surface in nature, and deceptive. Experienced managers avoid the use of these temporary fixes (73).

Competition is associated with the other factors in column 1 that militate against self-regulatory systems. The seven factors in column I are highly interrelated, constitute a pattern in management systems, to be associated in the minds of managers of a system. Thus, the manager who believes in controlling the system is likely to use rewards and punishments in a differential way to motivate people and to teach them appropriate behaviors for the system as it is viewed by the manager. Such managers use training to teach people the appropriate skills and attitudes, and set up the appropriate role relationships that maintain the system, which is likely to be autocratic or paternalistic. Such managers are likely to create competition for extrinsic rewards, to keep up motivation, to create energy, and perhaps to build up an appropriate fear level to get people's attention and keep them alert.

In a competitive system, behaviors and attitudes are induced, taught, trained into people. In a self-regulatory system, behaviors and attitudes seem to emerge out of the environment that is created by the interactions of people.

Collaborative attitudes, skills, and feelings seem to be indigenous to and in harmony with a collaborative universe.

The universe itself is evolving continuously in a direction of greater harmony and collaborativeness, great functional wholeness. When we collaborate we enter into balance and harmony with the whole (49).

Collaboration, at least in the long run, is productive and leads to positive outcomes and appropriate corporate goals. Collaborative work teams have higher productivity and creativity than non-collaborative ones.

Collaboration leads to opportunity for interaction, for feedback, for triggering of responses, and for productive interchange. It is this interchange that makes the key difference between effective organizational settings and ineffective ones.

Collaboration leads to emotional support, and to nurturing environments. Collaboration is the basis for teaming. Teams provide effective support, warmth, and the kind of interbeing that is therapeutic and wellness-inducing (45).

Collaboration is a blending of polarities, dichotomies, and paradoxes. It provides the basis for the transcending of potentially disruptive polarities. True collaboration makes it possible for polarity to be a positive force (38).

Collaboration leads to wellness and mental health. People who are consistently and genuinely collaborative in primary relationships are healthy of spirit and body.

Jeff Gibbs (21) creates a convincing discussion of flow and harmony in nature and in human systems. "Going with the flow" is a new-age aphorism, a useful suggestion for keeping safe when swimming near the beach, and a good way to make a profit in business. It is easy to see the importance of flow and harmony in materials distribution, warehousing, merchandising, scheduling airplane trips or freightcars, organizing matrix teams, building cash levels and planning construction programs. It is not as easy to see the application of this harmonic principle to more classically structured aspects of a business organization (31).

Too many managers "fight the river," building all kinds of structures to buttress defenses against the imagined dangers of giving people freedom and a free rein. The creativity of frightened management teams is truly amazing. We build up quality control procedures to remove error and, in so doing, build programmed carelessness and inattentiveness. We build pyramidal hierarchies that specify authority, span of control, channels of communication, levels of authority, and which parking lots and bathrooms to use. We build tight regulations for inventory controls, performance appraisal systems, vacation schedules and expense accounts (59).

Tight controls do release the river, but often the river is one of counter-dependency, inventive forgery of expense accounts, creative circumvention of schedule, determined by-passing of regulations, obedient lethargy, passive hostility, and other familiar, multitudinous and costly byproducts of the control systems (31).

Experienced managers need no illustration of the costly by-products of tight control systems. I recall a newly-appointed Vice President of Marketing of a large corporation reporting with glee his first expense account as VP, after years of chafing under and inventing expense accounts. He said that his first expense account as VP contained his signature, with an item scrawled across the multi-copied expense voucher: "Whores and liquor . . . $1,579.14." He said that the expense account was simply re-written and itemized in the accounting office. He received his check.

On another occasion, I recall waiting to be introduced as the key speaker to a large audience of top and upper management of a large corporation who were holding a three-day offsite meeting. While we waited, the VP of Industrial Relations made a few brief announcements, one of which went something like this: "As you all know, corporate policy prevents us from billing the company for liquor, so we have put an item for liquor on the individual bills and called it "conference room fees," which are permissible. Even though the VP of Finance was sitting in the audience, this circumventive practice was so common that no one even laughed about it. The one in charge, after a few more announcements, went on to introduce me: "And now we will hear from our eminent speaker, Dr. Jack R. Gibb, who will address us on the topic 'Authenticity in Management'!" I used this illustration in starting off my speech, and also referred to a "secret" procedure in the company called "double bookkeeping" and several other less palatable terms. Because the company rules about inventory control were so strict, it was almost universally felt in the widespread distribution centers around the country that it was impossible to meet these standards. Each local manager used two accounting systems, one to send to corporate that met the standards specifying number of items in stock, and another "real" accounting that was based upon the actual count of items in stock. Needless to say, this was very costly, in money to pay for the double accounting system, but, more importantly, in terms of programmed guilt and stress in maintaining the programmed mendacity. I worked as a primary consultant for the company for many years after this and, as far as I could tell, my speech had no effect upon the practice. The powerful forces that keep the ludicrous controls in effect and the powerful forces that keep the circumventive behaviors in effect outweigh simple rational approaches to the issue. Much later, after we engaged in a major restructuring of company personnel and policy, together with a team-development program, we made significant changes in this policy.

Every therapist who works with a person knows that each person has an inner direction, an internal harmony, a flow (39). Caring for self, going with one's own rhythms, working at one's own pace, going with one's strengths-'-there are many ways of talking about the effectiveness of one's,- own internal self-management. Part of this is related to the literal flowing of one's breathing, blood circulation, digestive systems, immunological systems--the systems that tend to manage themselves, creating an exquisite inner harmony, an unmanaged synchrony in one's body. Harmonizing one's activities with hourly, diurnal, and monthly patterns is an effective, wellness-keeping approach to selfness. Too much stress, work, fatigue, food, drugs, pain or any other factor can upset this exquisite flow (31).

Every skilled manager knows that individuals have idiosyncratic ways of working, resting, thinking and feeling. Experienced managers learn not to push too much, know what to say to individuals that will be useful. Inexperienced managers do push the river, meddle with the flow of the work force, step up speed of the assembly line or the work demands on a secretary (56).

Effective managers are aware of the conscious and unconscious self-management of the system. They let the system happen. They go with the flow. A famous football coach was asked how he managed his four mountainous, powerful, aggressive inner linemen. He said, "very carefully!"

Some years ago, I experimented with large groups of people from 400 to 3,000 in size. After a few years of tuning in to large groups of people, I was able to determine what they seemed to want to do, where their energies were moving, and what the flow of the audience was. When I tuned in to this effectively, I could do what seemed like magical things with these large "unmanageable" groups. I recall once being invited by the national YMCA to do a demonstration for a national conference of teenagers at Yosemite. I came into the room that evening and watched the group of 400 youth packed into the conference cabin. The well-intentioned director of the conference, wanting to set it up for me, had invited a magnetic song leader to work with the audience to warm it up. With incredible skill, he had them singing, swaying, dancing, laughing, moving with him in apparent ecstasy. At the peak of this, the director then introduced me with something like: "Now we have what we've been waiting for! You have all heard of Jack Gibb, who does magic with groups like us!" Having planned in advance to do something "spontaneous" with meditation, lying on the floor, doing something quieting, I found myself in some panic. Terror might be a more descriptive adjective for my feeling. Fortunately, I tuned in to my tuning-in theory which says something like: "Tell them to do what they are doing." I stood up and started off with: "Hey, guys, let's see how loud you can scream and how high you can jump!" Being already into this, they really got into it. I moved from this to other things that seemed to "flow" out of what I sensed they wanted to do, and afterwards they thought that "I" was terrific. There is a lot more to it than this, of course, but "going with the flow" is a basic in all work with people, animals, plants--everything. Did you ever see an expert gardener go out to the plants and try to persuade them to grow a little differently? The gardener establishes a relationship with the plants, a harmony, a collaborative creation of an environment in which the individual plants create their own flow. The total, interrelated system of plants in the garden creates a "company" environment for self-management. A self-regulating system.

I recall once when I was a young assistant professor, the President of the university, Franklin Harris, was faced with a faculty committee who complained about the cow paths that students made on the "hill." The students, not paying attention to the paths designed by the planners and architects, walked across trails on the grass, creating clearly marked "cow" paths that seemed to us on the committee to mar the scenery and symmetry of the campus. We thought of many methods of trying to control or influence the students: training programs in obedience, signs placed all over the campus, punishments for walking on the grass, and so on. Harris, following his "flow principle" that had helped him to be an outstanding administrator, said, simply, "How about building some cement sidewalks on the trails that the students have created?" It is a long story, but essentially it all turned out fine. The sidewalks were built. The new paths were graceful and sightly. The "problem" disappeared. I learned a lot about flow and environmental design from Frank Harris.

He understood a lot about self-managing systems long before I thought of the concept.

Largely because getting "out of control" seems so frightening and unproductive, management of all systems create external and induced controls to put the system into some kind of "manageable" order. Much of our modern management philosophy comes from such tightly hierarchical systems as the Prussian army and the Catholic church, each of which is awesomely structured and seemingly highly efficient. In efforts to control large systems and impose order on what looks like disorderly process we have hierarchies, policies, procedure manuals, span of control, channels of communication, time clocks, specified hours of work, closed office doors, inspection systems, performance appraisal, dress codes, titles, job specification manuals, and an impressive and multitudinous array of controls to keep the system orderly and productive.

Sometimes all this seems to work.

The inventiveness of management in imposing imaginative controls is exceeded only by the greater creativity of management and workers in circumventing them.

But often all this doesn't work very well. The psychological and financial costs of maintaining control systems are immense, often hidden, and escalatory.

I once heard a famous nutrition expert lecture. One of the audience members, in the question period, asked him what the most important single principle of nutrition was. The speaker said, without hesitation, "Eat less."

With the same validity, and with equal sureness, I would answer an analogous question about management in a similar way. What is the single most productive principle for improving management? "Control less." Someone called my attention to Thayer's (73) book the other day. I agree with him. We both say that the two most powerful negative forces that reduce productivity in American business are hierarchy and competition.

Many people agree. What do we do about it? The suggestion in this book is that we (a) manage in ways that enhance self-regulation, and (b) design self-regulatory environments in contemporary business. These are the two themes of this book.

A self-regulatory system is one in which we see emerge in the company a spirit of wonder, discovery, experimentation, and creativity. It is relatively easy for me to place companies I have worked with on an informal scale, with discovery focus at one end of the scale and a training/teaching/structuring focus at the other end of the scale. I will describe one company that is on one end of the scale and another company that is at the other end of the scale (16).

I have heard officials of one company say something like this about the organization: "We are an orderly company. We have well-established policies and procedures that we have found over the years to work very well. We select and promote people in management at our excellent assessment centers, finding people whose attitudes and views are consistent with our company policies. We are especially proud of our widely-known training programs, in which we train people in skills and attitudes that are appropriate at each level of management. We have excellent orientation programs for new hires, for people just out of management schools, and for others who are new to our management system. Our management systems in data processing, marketing, distribution, and manufacturing are well known and widely respected. We often have management from other companies visiting us to learn our procedures. We are a proud and stable company."

There is high agreement among visitors and top officials in describing the above company. About the second company there is much less agreement, less consistency, less stability. A composite statement would look something like this: "We've had a lot of success over the years, with some ups and downs. We have had some widely-known breakthroughs, inventions, and shifts in policy and structure of the company. We experiment a lot--with everything. We never punish errors in judgment in a company manager. We figure if a manager doesn't make an occasional error he isn't imaginative and experimental enough. We like imagination, even wild ideas. Some say we are too permissive about this. You have to be a kook to get anywhere in this company. Whatever you say, everyone admits that this norm has surely been successful and profitable. We've made our mistakes, but we've had a hell of a lot more successes and major breakthroughs. It is exciting around here. People don't go to sleep. People get worked up. You often see offices full of people late at night when something exciting is going on. We choose our management from people who seem adventurous and excited about new ideas. We don't have training programs for managers. Our managers learn what they need to know very quickly on their own. You can't train people to manage."

Each of the two above companies has an excellent reputation and a very favorable profit picture. The reputation, humor and norms are consistent with the picture, I’ve painted. In Company A, for instance, I remember one official saying that when he first came into the company as a young manager, he was carefully briefed to be sure to always have a car less costly than that of his boss, and always to have a car more costly than those of his subordinates, in order to preserve the tone of the hierarchy. In Company B, on the other hand, so many reorganizations had taken place that a standard joke was told of a manager, on going to lunch, saying to his secretary, "If the boss calls, get the name."

In terms of the theme of this book, it is fairly clear that Company A is a much-managed company, and probably would not likely develop that style spontaneously without strong management control systems. Company B, on the other hand, is much more like self-regulated sub-systems that I have seen.

As an informal test of my perceptions, I asked five well-known consultants for their descriptions of the two companies. Their descriptions were similar to mine. When I asked them which of the two companies they would bet on as having a more positive outlook for the future, each of the five consultants were firm in choosing Company B. I believe that in the long run, the future belongs to the discovery-centered, experimental system rather than the training-oriented, high-structure system (52, 74).

Self-regulation is the process of the person or the organization focusing on continual discovering of, processes that lead to high productivity and high creativity. Self-regulation is an active, changing, evolving process that leads to a discovering, in each moment, of ways to work together in the organization (5).

In the self-regulating team, department, or organization, the themes are wonder, discovering newness, the delight of adventure, the excitement of ambiguity, the lack of closure, and the zest of moving into the unknown. What they are about is discovering something new each day about ourselves, our products, our processes, our ways of organizing or being together, our ways of approaching work. Something new is being learned in each moment and each day.

The sense of wonder and excitement is highly related to the processes that nurture the emergence of a truly passionate path. As an external consultant, I have walked around in the offices and plants of many companies. It seems to me that a sensitive newcomer can feel the difference between companies that focus on stability and training, and companies that focus upon the discovery of newness. In some companies, one feels the focus upon a cluster of attitudes, processes and behaviors: order, authority, time clocks, training people, schedules, getting to meetings on time, following proper procedures, taking orders and giving orders, and doing things right. In other companies, one feels a focus upon: adventure, discovery, talking about new ideas, trying out new procedures, seeking new forms, experimentation, and the joy of wonder.

In the discovery-oriented company, everyone seems to get into the act (24). Nothing is sacred. People do not follow channels. People stay late in the evening. Work is so much fun that it isn't work. Regulation comes, and schedules are met, and inventions are made because people have inner motivations that focus upon self-chosen work. Sometimes you see a company or a department where many moments are sources of wonder and excitement, where a new person is a source of creative energy rather than a fear object, where new ideas or strange notions are things to celebrate rather than defend against. Adventure is a contagious disease that spreads throughout such organizations. In my experience, these units are somewhat rare, but very much possible.

I read a beautiful passage the other day where a young scientist found a new viewpoint that seemed to disprove one of the fundamental tenets of Bertrand Russell's mathematical system. Going, fearfully, to make an appointment with Russell to discuss this new confronting finding, the young scientist was acutely apprehensive of the reactions of this brilliant mathematical genius. Russell's reaction was something like: "Fantastic, I'm delighted to be still alive to see this magnificent new discovery that proves one of my basic propositions incorrect!" When one is deeply into discovering, the wonder supersedes all else.

The discovery orientation filters through and activates the whole business enterprise. Discovery is the heart of vital and successful business.

The word "training" has unfortunate connotations. It sounds a little like what people do to dogs that are unruly and to kids that wet the bed. In Table 1, we have contrasted a "discovering" orientation with a "training" orientation.

The disadvantages of a training approach to organizational issues are several:

1. Training is usually what some people do to other people. It is seldom co-designed, collaborative, or a co-discovering process. It is often assumed that some people, the trainers, know how to do things, and other people, the trainees, don't know how to do these things.
2. The processes are often covert and not out in the open. The processes of rewarding and punishing, influencing and manipulating are often subtle and more under the control of the trainer than the trainees.
3. In many instances, particularly in the popular "behavior modification" programs, the neuro-linguistic programming, and hypnosis training programs, the methodology may sometimes be manipulative. Trainers use procedures that are only partially conscious, that are not under the control of the learner, and that depend upon the sometimes manipulative skills and techniques of the trainer. They are certainly not co-planned, autogenic, or collaborative. They do not prepare people for effective participation in self-regulatory lives or organizations. They often make trainees more dependent, more subject to manipulation, and less proactive.
4. The programs often reflect the values, norms and attitudes of autocratic or, paternalistic management rather than the norms, values, or attitudes appropriate to participative management or self-regulatory and emergent systems (45).
5. The programs are usually designed by the training companies or by the training departments in the company to require expert trainers, special scoring or measuring instruments, manuals that are patented and available only for rent, trainers that come to the training company for special training, techniques that are specialized, patented, esoteric, and certainly not autogenic. Training designs are thus not designed to be self-administering or to fit into self-regulatory systems, or into un-managed or trainer-less or consultant-less programs.
6. The training programs are often costly, ineffective, and far less related to organizational and personal work skills than, say, on-the-job, "in-the-process" learning.

The designs of the future will have as a primary criterion of effectiveness that they be easily used by selfregulatory people and systems. That is, that they require no special, esoteric or patented trainer skills, no specially-trained people who do the training, no instruments not publicly available or easily constructed by participants, and no special training sessions away from the job. The way to learn self-regulatory personal and organizational behaviors is in the process of becoming self-regulatory. To exaggerate and to paraphrase a popular aphorism, one experience in self-regulatory action is worth a thousand experiences in training for it.

I have worked for many years as a training person, consulted with training operations, written books on training issues, and feel that I am familiar with many of the issues. In this section, I am being very hard on training. But I am quite convinced that we are rightly moving away from training, especially the classic and conventional kind of training that is described above.

Skills, attitudes, knowledge, perceptions, and feelings are best learned in action, in self-regulatory environments, in co-created situations, in full collaboration, in atmospheres of high trust. Learning is best when it is designed and planned by the learner, when it is in response to autogenic wants of the learner, when it is voluntary, when it is under the conscious control of all the participants, and when it is directly related to the self-perceived needs and wants of the learner (44, 72).

Attitudes, skills, and perceptions often arise out of the environment in which the person is living or working. When the environment is radically changed, people's attitudes and skills and perceptions and feelings often change radically.

Well-known studies at Ohio State determined that some children who went to summer camps that were racially mixed learned to like members of other races and some learned to dislike them. The critical variable was found to be the home and school environment of the children. Those that lived in homes and schools that used frequent punishment learned, in the summer camp, to develop biases against other races. Those who came from non-punishing homes and schools got along well with kids from other races and enjoyed the summer camp experiences. These and voluminous other data indicate the extreme power of the contrasting environments described in columns I and 2 of Table 1.

One approach that Omicron theorists and consultants have tried with great success is to work with companies in the collaborative creation of new environments that optimize the attitudes and behaviors in column 2 (35, 71).

In a large pharmaceutical company, management was concerned by the amount of resistance, boredom, work stoppage, and requests to get relief on some of the assembly lines. One approach that was considered was to institute a training program to change values and attitudes. Another alternative that was considered was to create work environments that allowed greater self-determination on the line. When the workers on the multi-station assembly line were allowed to make free choices of stations and trade with others whenever they wished (a form of self-regulation), they quickly changed the negative attitudes. After a period of time, they asked the union to permit them to request a speed-up of the assembly line. It was more fun to change jobs when the line moved faster. The changes resulted in more positive attitudes, but also in less errors, and a much higher number-per-hour of properly assembled units that met government specifications. The new environment (flow, self-determination, collaboration) quickly produced new attitudes (62, 64).

In Chapter 12, Collaborative Environmental Design, I have given a number of other instances of a collaborative, environmentally-focused approach to self-regulation in business systems. It is likely that in almost all instances inventive people can co-discover environmental conditions that improve the quality of working 1ife and the quality of productivity. This can usually be done as an alternative to a training approach to productivity.

I remember one time at the beginning of a training group, one of the members asking that each of us introduce ourselves, giving our occupation and role. The member, in suggesting this, said, "… and then I will know how to treat you." and then I will know how to Each member of the group seemed to be affronted. It seems to me that few people like to be put into a category, a box. Or to be stereotyped. Or to be treated as a member of a class.

Sometimes it is difficult not to give people special role treatment. If you are a manager, something in you wants to be given the special treatment and respect due to a person of consequence. If you are a worker, you may feel a certain obligation to treat managers with special deference. It is difficult for either the actor or the perceiver to get away from role prescriptions, role obligations, role expectations, or special-role treatment.

It is highly important for the manager and the worker to learn to treat each other as persons, not as roles. Each person is a unique being. Each person has a special essence that differs from the essence or core of every other person.

Many of the most significant social movements of our day center on this dilemma. Blacks want to be treated as persons, not as a class. Women want to be treated as unique individuals, not as housewives, bed partners, junior partners, or as any kind of role. The other day I heard a 10-year-old boy, introduced to the group by his father as "my son," say to the group and to his father, "I'm not your anything. I'm my own self" (8).

When I and others place me in a role, we lock me into prescriptive expectations, programmed behaviors and attitudes that often predetermine how others see me, evaluate me and want me to behave. My freedom is restricted. I am dehumanized. My uniqueness is abridged. I am somehow made less special. I am boxed in (9, 10, 32).

This role locking occurs at all levels, in all jobs, in all cultures, and with both sexes. In our country at this time we are going through a revolution in reducing the role restrictions we place on women, blacks, and homosexuals, to mention the three most notable examples. Is it possible that someone has not heard the message that these groups of people resent being stereotyped?

Senator Hayakawa and I were together on the board of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. He told several stories about his problem of getting out of several stereotypes that people kept hitting him with. In one instance, he tells of asking the waitress in a restaurant for an order of tea. She asked, "How do you people take your tea?" He asked, "What do you mean?" She said, "How do you Orientals take your tea?" When he said that he wasn't an "oriental" but an "American," she was completely confused and retreated from the conversation. He and I each had the good fortune of having a child that was severely retarded. We shared stories of the way that "feeble-minded" and "retarded" people were classified, demeaned, dehumanized, and put in steel boxes. Once when we took Larry, who was retarded and handicapped, to a psychiatrist for consultant help, he turned to us and asked, "Have you ever thought of putting 'it' in an institution?" How high does the IQ have to be for a person to be seen as human?

I feel that a simple test of significant elements of the institutional climate of a business institution is to listen to how one of the executives talks about the persons who perform secretarial duties. They may say things like: "I'll get the girl," "I'll ask the secretary," "Xerox this," or "I'll have my girl do it." There are gradations of humanization, dignity or person-ness.

There are beautiful examples of a changing climate. I was in the office of a chief executive one day, with several dignitaries in his conference. On his desk was a conference phone. At one point he said, on the phone, "Mary, when you have a minute would you come in and help us?" Her reply was, "Sure, Dick, I"11 be in as soon as I finish this paragraph." When she came in he introduced all of us by first names, asked her for some help, and then thanked her for coming in. I told this story later to a group of top executives in a conference. The response of one of them was: "Just let one of my girls say something like that to me and she'd be gone the next day!" He was affronted by her use of the president's first name, her slight delay in "reporting in," and her easy manner in the situation. She was "out of place." Executives and managers live in many different worlds. It is easy to see the roots of labor unrest, management-worker disputes, and dysfunctional stress in the business climate.

All the column-1 behaviors and attitudes are interlocked (6). For instance, it is very difficult to treat people as persons when they are living in hierarchical relationships. No matter how "client-centered" the therapeutic theory, it is difficult for a "client" to treat a "doctor" as a peer and move into a collaborative wellnessoriented relationship, especially when the role accouterments are reinforcing the role relationship: if one pays the other a fee, if one "diagnoses" the other's "ailment," and one is expected to be "responsible" for the mental health of the other.

Titles, furniture, pay schedules, dress, programmed and expected deference, form of speech, nonverbal gestures, and a thousand other aspects of role and hierarchy lock all or most of the participants into differential expectations that make self-regulation very difficult.

Once when recovering from a major operation I was being ignored by busy nurses and attendants and was feeling like a piece of inelegant furniture in the room. I had made a request which was completely ignored. The surgeon, who knew me well, happened to come by. He looked at me briefly without saying anything and then said to one of the nurses, "Would you change my drug order for Dr. Gibb, please, and see that he gets it right away?" Assuming that I was a physician, the nurses and attendants all changed their behavior to me immediately and treated me from then on like a resident monarch. Roles do make a difference, especially in an hierarchy.

If a business system is going to experiment with self-regulating sub-systems in a business operation, it is highly important that attention be paid to relevant factors in the sub-system such as the ones listed in column 1. It is difficult to change some of the environmental aspects that contribute to "role behavior." A Japanese firm is trying in a factory in the U.S. to have everyone dress alike in casual uniforms, have everyone be called "associates" instead of other titles, and to change other symptoms of hierarchical and power relationships. In some ways, this is working very well. In some ways, these arbitrary and imposed environmental changes don't change the underlying structural and process differentials that maintain the role behaviors. Such changes are probably in the right direction and are preparing readiness for more basic self-regulatory changes in business life. They are promising, but we need to change more than language and dress.

In Tables 3 and 4, Chapter 13, we have defined "proactivity" as our central mediating variable for the Trust Level and Omicron theories of self-regulation (9, 17).

Many interviews and conversations with proactive people give us information on how these people see the world. Or, more accurately, how people see the world when they behave proactively. In the next few paragraphs, I will step inside the world of the proactive person and try to describe how the world looks from this vantage point. (A detailed presentation of the elements of proactivity is presented in Table 2.) When proactive, a person is saying:

I create my own environment. My environment does not create me. I am in charge of me. I choose my own feelings, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. I reach out to life and to people.

I am responsive to people, but do not "react" to them. I am not controlled by their behavior or wishes. I am not a victim of circumstances, angry people or powerful enemies. I do respond to everything. I am aware.

I am oriented toward being in contact with everything in the universe, tuning in to persons, vibrations, moods, plants, and spirits. I easily empathize with people, put myself in their shoes, and attempt to see things from their viewpoints. I try to be with people, not to change, manipulate, influence, teach or persuade them. I join them in some way, building a collaborative relationship.

I am dedicated to being a competent, responsive, and dedicated member of any organization to which I belong. I am thus well thought of by other members.

I work well with autocratic forms of management, but prefer to work in a self-regulating system. I prefer to collaborate with others, rather than to manage them or be managed by them.

Proactive people create a passionate path (17), an integration of their energies into a lifelong journey which gives meaning, excitement, direction, and passion to their lives (69).

The energy-filled journey comes from the essence of the person, from the depths of passion, being, and spirit. The personal and professional choices of the person come out of this pathway (6).

These centered people are excellent members of organizations. They are proactive. They are prone to collaborate. They reach out to others. They may come early and stay late if the job is tied in with their passionate paths. They are intrinsically motivated and do not require extrinsic rewards to trigger off their energies.

These people are usually in the middle of discussions about work organization, nurturing environments, design of work, and related issues. They put energies into self-regulation. Self-regulation is no big issue with such people. They are not likely to drain off their energies into the displaced problems that present chronic "management" issues: anger, resistance, miscommunication, fatigue, blaming, resentment of others who work less hard, arguments about work space, concerns about favoritism, and the like. Such displaced issues loom large with people who find little fulfillment and spiritual renewal in their work.

The design of self-regulating organizations starts with creating an environment in which people can find out their passionate paths and create jobs that match the path with the job, making creative perceptual shifts that do this matching, and making creative changes in the job that make the job into a spiritual journey. They make the jobs meaningful and the organizational work-life a fulfilling one.

In Chapter 8, I discuss the creation of a corporate pathway or mission that integrates the paths of the members into a transcending focus for the corporation itself.

Proactive people strengthen each other's passionate paths (9). They allow others to create pathways that are unique and individual. And they create groups, teams and organizations that make a higher integration of pathways possible. They create jobs and programs that synergize the whole process so that the corporate mission includes all of the individual paths and transcends these individual pathways into a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

When people are fearful and defensive, they are likely to allow themselves to be captives or victims of the system (65). They are caught up in semi-automatic authority patterns, resentments of any organized effort to team them up, counterdependent feelings toward those with power over them, and hostile projections into the environment around them. They trip themselves up on their own programmed reactivity.

Because the above description applies to most of us in some organized situations, organizations in the past have been created to "handle" these dependencies. Management creates controls and hierarchy to keep order and to prevent the resentments from mobilizing. They institute reward and punishment programs to program the motivations of people and fit them into organizational patterns. They prescribe roles and role prescriptions on organizational charts. So rigidified are these prescriptive charts that one of my executive friends calls the little rectangles on the charts "coffins." If people aren't dead before they are boxed in, they soon lie when captured in the role prescription.

To learn to be proactive is to learn to get out of reactive captivity. The victims of organizational rigidity get mired in the mediocrity, passivity, apathy, reactiveness, subversiveness and competitiveness of the organizational half-life. They begin to compete for irrelevant nothingnesses like parking spaces, corner office space, keys to executive wash rooms, invitations to parties, sexual favors, longer vacations, and salesperson-of-the-decade buttons. People who put their passions into their paths conserve their energies for activities that are more significant to them. They get angry about the right things. Reactive people splatter their shots all over the fairway. Jack Nicklaus gets angry and puts his anger into his shot. His anger-driven ball goes even farther and straighter down the fairway. The centered and pathed worker puts her or his anger into doing an even higher-quality job that is life-relevant. He or she doesn't put these divine energies into such things as the committee to punish the people who get the bathrooms dirty.

In Table 1, proactivity is contrasted with susceptibility to rewards and punishments. The truly passionate artist is putting creativity and energy into self-chosen activities that provide their own "rewards." He or she is not easily influenced by extrinsic rewards and punishments like merit badges, pats on the head, bonus pay, reprimands, salary adjustments, or performance appraisals. The reward is in the work itself, in the self-created achievement, in the inner joy of artistry, and in the sense of congruence with one’s inner destiny (5).

I like to think as I type. I have a love affair with my IBM Selectric, anyway, and we understand each other. Love each other, to be more accurate. She (the typewriter--my typewriter--is gently feminine) collaborates with me more than anyone, it seems. We have been going steady for the last eighteen months, working/playing on this trilogy manuscript. Gradually I noticed that the typewriter, Maxine, that is, was getting weaker, showing signs of resistance and fatigue. I was concerned.

I called the typewriter shop one day, in the heat of a busy session, and took Maxine in for a check-up. The busy repairman looked at the machine, said it (He called Maxine "It"!) needed an overhaul because it was losing its power. I could rent another typewriter for $30 a week, with one week minimum. He would look at the typewriter and call to give me an estimate, with a service charge of $35 for each hour he worked on it. He thought it would take several hours. On the phone, he had said that I could take his IBM Selectric I as a rental. When I started to pick up the machine it looked strange. I complained that it wasn't the right model. He, impatiently, said it was the "'same." Irritated, finally, I refused to take the uncomfortably different model, because I was typing around the clock and needed a familiar model.

Angry at his apparent deception, I called another shop and took the typewriter in for repair, anticipating another problem. And here is the key to the story: The repairman, Bob, looked at the machine. After a quick glance he said, "Your problem is very simple. You are using the incorrect ribbon. You don't need a repair job. Just change the ribbon and you will notice an immediate difference." I could hardly believe him. He took a Selectric I (simple carbon) ribbon, changed from mine, which was a "correctable" ribbon. My ribbon, sold incorrectly to me by a book store person who, according to Bob, either didn't know the difference or wanted to make a larger profit, created many problems. It piled up carbon in the machine, made a poor copy except on special typing paper to be used with the ribbon. As soon as he typed a copy with his ribbon, it was clear that all of the problems had disappeared. He charged me about $20 for his time in cleaning up the typewriter and some appropriate ribbons, and I left with a marvelous feeling. He was a virtuoso with a typewriter. I noticed his love for Maxine when he changed the ribbon, cleaned her up, touched her gently, all the time informing me, with a tender pride, about her and how to take care of her.

There are several points to the story. Bob, who gave me the accurate diagnosis, was a magnificent artist at his chosen work. Artists create themselves through choosing to integrate their passions into their paths, put their energies where their hearts are, become skilled. A lot of good things happen when persons follow a passionate path. They enjoy their work. They become what my good friend, Randy Kunkel, calls "artists." Their pathways are spiritual. Their missions are beyond the work itself. They are compassionate for others. They are proactive. They are excellent members of organizations. Their work is a joy to watch. They need little or no management.

I am aware that there are others like Bob. Rare, perhaps. But everyone is a potential Bob. I remember asking a friend in Boulder, Colorado, who had lived there all his life, if there was an honest auto repairman in town. I had had a number of discouraging experiences with repairmen in garages. Harvey, my friend, said, immediately, "Yes, there is one, a fellow by the name of Joe." He gave me his address. I went to see Joe, and he diagnosed my ailing car immediately, said that nothing basic was wrong with it, though the reason I had gone to him was that another person had given me a $480 price tag on an overhaul. Joe took care of my car for about ten years. My problems with the car almost disappeared. Joe was talented, compassionate, caring, honest. He deeply loved his work and the cars he lovingly cared for.

Another experience that stands out was our visit, with ailing Larry, to a noted medical diagnostician in a Philadelphia hospital. We had taken Larry to three specialists, none of whom could tell what was wrong with him. The Philadelphia diagnostician correctly identified the brain tumor in a few moments of observation. He loved children and bodies and knew both exceptionally well. He was, again, talented, compassionate, caring, deeply honest, and loved his work with a passion.

Each of these three artists is a member of an organization. Each is exceptionally talented. Each is proactive. Each is a self-regulatory person. Ease is on a passionate path (17).

Self-regulating organizations tend to produce people like this. And people like this tend to create self-regulating organizations. The relationship is not an accident.

Since I've been writing this chapter and telling people about the concept, I've been hearing amazing examples given to me by friends and colleagues. Examples that people give me of "artists" in all walks of life.

People like those described above create self-regulating systems, pockets of self-regulation in the organizations to which they belong. It is also true that self-regulating systems provide a nourishing environment for the creation of such artistry. It is a circulatory process. It illustrates the point that the primary advantage of self-regulation lies in the effects it has upon people in the system. It grows people. It is also, of course, cost-effective and efficient from an organizational standpoint, but this advantage is, by comparison, ancillary.

What are these people like?

On a passionate path. Each of these people seems to be on what I have called a "passionate path" (17). Each has discovered an internal source of high energy and are putting this energy into a self-chosen spiritual journey that guides their life activities and their occupational choices. They continue to put their passions into their pathways, and not to dissipate their energies into diluted activities, irrelevant by-paths, wasted energy, irrelevant defense systems, displaced angers, and other life activities that take energy away from what is important to them (17).

Have little need to be "managed." Because of these high, focused energies and the other factors mentioned in this list, these journeyed people have little or no need to be controlled, managed, directed, or told what to do. They see what needs to be done. They are good "organizational people" in the best and most positive sense. They are the kinds of people that everyone would like to hire or have working for them or with them. They easily join other "artistic" people in forming a high-quality business community. High quality, high performance, and high productivity are inevitable byproducts of the actions of such people. They require very little in the way of "support services," staff or system controls (44).

Consummate artistry. These people attract attention because they do VERY WELL what they do. The three people mentioned above diagnose illness in children, improve typewriters, and mend cars better than anyone else. As one of them said, "I wouldn't know how to do it any other way." Their energies, skills, and caring devotion goes into their work/play. As Bob said, "I usually come over here for a while each weekend because I like it." I enjoyed watching Bob work with a typewriter. He looked and acted like a concert pianist in action. He tenderly touched the parts of the typewriter. I loved my typewriter because I had built a loving relationship with her. He loved the typewriter because he loved typewriters. He was devoting his immense energies to making life better for typewriters and the people who love and enjoy them (72).

Super energy. They have energy that comes from an inner source. They are admired by others who sense this wellspring of grace and beauty. They look alive and act alive. They create their own energy and put it in what they enjoy doing. This congruence leads to a high level of wellness of spirit, body, and mind. They are integrated people. Their motivations come from internal sources. They do not need to be motivated by management. They do not need to be supervised and kept on the job. The job is created by them and owned by them. An integral part of them.

Humility. My impression from my observations and interviews of these people is that they are humble. What they are doing is "no big thing," as my friends in Hawaii say. They take their supreme artistry for granted. The inner calm and serenity that comes to them from being supremely skilled in something that they prize doing leads them to be relatively non-defensive, having nothing to prove. Generic humility. Easy to be around.

Gentleness and spirituality. I think of these people as being on a "spiritual journey." They seem to be spiritual beings, in the deepest sense. They are not arrogant, strident, puffed up. They are coming from their essence. They talk the way they walk. They have deep inner strength from having found a lifeway that brings quiet and dignity. They are what Abe Maslow called "self-actualized" people. Hostility and aggressiveness are defensive postures, coming from deep inner dissatisfaction and projected on to the world. Their projections on others come from an inner satisfaction (17).

Honesty. I am, of course, generalizing from an inadequate sample, but it seems to me significant that in each of the three cases mentioned above, the person was amazingly and notably honest. This impression comes, as well, from 200 or so people whom I interviewed for my Passionate Path book. My impression is that the usual forms of dishonesty in business come from the prevalence of feelings of low competence and low inner serenity, and resulting strong drives to impress people and seek to create images that are dishonest and false. Part of what supports the prevalence of less-than-honest behaviors in business is a prevalent assumption that "one can't get ahead in business if one is strictly honest." I recall giving an invited speech to a large convention of sales managers, during which I said, "My impression is that sales people shave the truth in order to make a sale." One of the sales managers in the large audience of 1,000 or so raised his hand and commented, "Yes, I agree with you completely, but it is even more interesting to note that not only do I lie to my customers, but all of my customers lie to me." He went on to make his point by asking me to quickly think of my last conversation with a sales person who was trying to sell me something I didn't want. I thought of a recent case. He said, "Tell us the lies you told him." I had to admit that I had given him three "excuses" for not buying his expensive product. Each of the excuses had been less than strictly honest and had been given to get rid of the sales person. I was not the only kettle among all these pots. Each of the sales people had, of course, been customers. Dishonesty is epidemic to a competitive economic system, and perhaps one of the least palatable costs of maintaining such a system. Perhaps most diagnostic in our whole discussion of sales was the fact that everyone seemed to agree with what we said about honesty among sales people and customers. It perhaps goes without saying that we don't know if everyone was in "honest" agreement! Honesty is a system symptom. It is perhaps inevitable in high-persuasion and high-competition environments. It is a hopeful sign for societal reconstruction to note that one way of creating a more honest society would be to create an environment in which we could become true "artists" on passionate paths. This condition would remove what is perhaps the primary cause of the social disease of dishonesty. Dishonesty is removed by environmental design (31, 32).

Trust. As discussed in detail in the Trust book (46), honesty is one of the causes and one of the effects of a hightrust state. Since writing the Trust book, I have had amazing responses from people in the four years from 1978 to 1982. I surely had understated the significance of the effects of trust level upon people and systems, and how important the concept of trust is in management development, management practices, and organizational effectiveness. I remember, for instance, having been invited to talk about trust to a large convention of dentists. The Dental Association has chosen the Trust book as a book of the month and they had invited me to talk about the concept. After I had talked a bit and involved the audience in the issues, one of the dentists said, "Jack, you are underestimating how important trust is in a dental practice." The more I listened to them talk, the more I realized that they had a lot more to tell me than I had to tell them about the effects of fear and distrust. it was a memorable experience. Another powerful one was a visit to an optometrist. I had sat in the waiting room and had heard a woman in the waiting room "handle" her two little children while we all waited. The doctor said to me as he was giving me an examination, "The woman in the waiting room is wanting me to fit her with contact lenses. She won't be able to wear them." He didn't know anything about my trust -theory or my book, but seemed to quote from it. He said, "See how controlling she is with her children. It means she is frightened, and will be too tense to relax and accept the lenses." We talked for a long time about trust and vision and I learned a lot from him about the significance of trust.

I am very much impressed with the trust level of the three artists mentioned earlier. And am sure from my passionate path interviews that trust is the key variable in the building of artistry and self-regulatory environments.

Compassion. Dramatic to me, from my observations of these three people, was the compassion each showed to me, to other clients and customers, and to their families whom each talked about. Again, this fitted my observations of the people who were creating their passionate paths. Passion and compassion are inextricably intertwined (17). It seems that the functional and satisfying release of energy into self-chosen career and life pathways leaves the person free to be empathic, listening, caring--compassionate. People around all three of these artists felt their concern and caring. This relationship gives a clue as to one reason self-regulatory systems lead to mutual concern for co-workers, much more concern than in systems that are highly managed. The emergent compassion is autogenic and is not induced or trained into the people.

Freedom from risk. I produce the risk that I see (41). It is not present in the environment. These artists tend to see life as safe, customers as trustworthy and friendly, colleagues as not dangerous or competitive, and the company or the system as ameliorative. High-trust environments (46) produce artists who tend to perceive the world as risk-free.

Artists transcend or move beyond the everyday skills, abilities, or limitations that seem so apparent to many of us. The three people above, like other people of high artistry, tuned in, in a mystical manner, to the typewriter, the automobile, or the child. Artists are mystics. They see beyond the apparent. They tune in to aspects of the environment that escape others. They reach higher levels of awareness. They are transcendents.

I believe that every process or form or event is in the process of transcending itself, moving beyond where it is and what it is. The universe is in motion. Dynamic motion is the very nature of being.

The world of peak experiences, mystical atonement, psychic abilities, superenergy, transcendental experiences, pre-cognition, clairvoyance, and other untold wonders are available to every person. These experiences and abilities are available for the asking. The world of awareness is constantly expanding. I spell out in the third volume of this trilogy (19) the observation that the current age is characterized in a unique way by the prevalence and powerful effects of this transcendence.

Even Abe Maslow, as tuned in as he was to the world of mystical experience, believed that his "peak experiences" were available to only a small percentage of people. We have moved a long way in the brief period since his death. We now know that these "beyondness" experiences are available to each of us. Particularly, we know that these abilities are available to use in the business world. When I give a talk to top management in the business world about these prevalent transcendent abilities, they are very likely to agree with me. One reason they are into top management is that they use their innate mystical and intuitive powers much more effectively than others do.

It is possible for every person to reach states of high artistry, to transcend the usual, everyday levels of sill, performance, and artistry. We are now opening up transcending capabilities to every man and every woman. We are moving into a new age where we accept as "normal" these superior capabilities, intuitive understandings, paranormal states of motivation, marathon states of high energy, clairvoyant perceptive abilities used in diagnosis, breakthroughs in every area of life.

The promise of self-regulatory systems is that such phenomena can be produced in every business. The key is to create high-trust atmospheres that engender such transcendence. As I indicate in Chapter 11, this transcendence is happening in the home, the church, the government, as well as in business (7, 15).

As indicated in my findings about the passionate paths of individuals (17), people who really seek inside to find a congruent, autogenic, life-enriching and spiritual journey through life, consistently come up with what I have called "noble" goals, and a "passion" that guides their lives toward life orientations that are compassionate, significant, and of noble intent. These orientations have universal meanings, tap into racial archetypes, are transcendent in nature, and provide visionary missions that tape the very roots of spiritual and moral values. People on passionate paths are not superficial, trivial, irrelevant, harmful, egotistical, or deeply uncaring people.

So it is with institutions that collaboratively create corporate passionate paths.

A similar point was made by a panel of political scientists the other day who were analyzing the programs and aims of a series of 20th-century presidents of the United States. They felt strongly that those administrations that had passionate dedication to "noble," universal, and wholeness-oriented missions were successful and made significant contributions to the betterment of America. They were in unanimous agreement that Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy would be remembered in history as making historic contributions to "noble" and universal changes, enriching the lives of Americans, making steps toward world government, contributing to lasting peace, or increasing the spirituality and quality of life in America. In other words, they were on what I've been calling "spiritual journeys" and "passionate pathways." They spoke to the universal aspirations and transcendent values of people.

The panel agreed that presidents who were focused on more transient, opportunistic, cosmetic, materialistic, or efficiency aims were unable to achieve significant contributions to the quality of life. Those who had essentially negative aims like reducing costs, reducing government, cutting budgets, improving efficiency, and doing away with programs, not only did not achieve noble and transcendent aims, but also failed to carry out their efficiency and administration-oriented aims.

This same generalization applies, with even more dramatic relevance, to business systems. The focus upon administrative and managerial efficiency is relatively trivial and seldom results in changes in more significant aspects of corporate life: corporate vitality, creativity, quality of product, sustained dedication to a transcending corporate mission, relevance of corporate contributions to quality of life in the culture, or corporate health. Concentration on "efficiency," near term profits, cosmetic or hygienic aspects, cost reduction, ROI, or bottom line is missing the target, misplacing the energy, and not likely to produce organizations that will move us into the exciting future--and not even to produce the efficiency outcomes.

Symptoms of this failure to create significant corporate missions that are noble and spiritual are everywhere. Dramatic failures of the construction, airline, and auto industries, to mention a few. Erosion of trust in business and government leadership. Inability to compete with other countries, and a frantic rush to get protectionist tariff policies to give us an artificial boost to cover up our failures to organize for quality and creativity. Displacement of energy into "defensive" preparation for war, and building cosmetic and illusory strength through armament. Frantic focus upon "hard" and depersonalized variables like inflation, inventory changes and balance of trade, and the purposeful neglect of people variables like massive unemployment, suicides, and hunger. Concentration of business and government energy upon near-term issues like profit levels, housing sales, and inventory levels rather than upon the monumental far-term and enduring issues of misuse of natural energy resources, increase in air and water pollution, lack of auto safety, accumulation of toxic nuclear wastes, wilderness deterioration- and dozens of other conditions that are the result of short-sighted focus upon "efficiency" and "managerial" considerations and the neglect of the massively more significant considerations about conservation of resources, corporate mission, and corporate relevance (8, 25).

Collaborative corporate focus upon an emerging mission that has social, spiritual, long-range, and universal significance is a practical approach to the solution of the above problems. Dramatic things happen to the bodies, minds, energy levels, and spiritual dedications of persons who focus upon a passionate path, who put their energies where their paths lie, who create life journeys that focus on what is significant to them.

The same dramatic changes occur in companies that focus upon an enduring corporate mission that has primal significance to the company and to everyone concerned. A central mission of which members can be proud, to which workers can contribute passionate energy, toward which the community can relate in some way, around which all kinds of surprising energy can mobilize--this points toward a necessary transformation in business and government and other institutions.

Movement away from over-management and the assumptions that create it, and movement toward self-sustaining self-regulatory environments is one sure road to transformation. The universalizing corporate mission emerges from self-regulatory processes. People, in interaction, discover what they want to do, gradually take on the zeal that comes from creative, autogenic work on activities that are of deep significance to them. Spiritual pathways synergize. Everyone can take some meaningful part in the noble mission.

This book is written for people whose job is to manage an enterprise of some kind. I would like to focus in this chapter on the central issue: What do I do as a manager if I want to help make the organization more self-regulating? What does the Omicron Orientation say about this question?

Collaboration. I would be as collaborative with each person in the organization as I am able to be. I want to team up with others in the organization to build an ongoing team, to work with others, to be an effective member of any work group that I join. I do not want to be competitive with others, to be strategic in my relations with them, or to dissipate my energies in political considerations. The more I keep my eye on the total picture of the whole organization, the more effectively collaborative I will be.

Flow. I look at the organization as a flowing, emerging, ever-changing and dynamic form. I want to work in harmony with the idiosyncratic flow of the organization. I want to live in harmony and synergy with others in the organization. I want to create the flow as I join it. I am not a passive object or a passive observer of the organization and its activities. I enter into the flow at all times and thus am an active participant in changing it. I do not contribute to the building of relationships that depend on hierarchy, power, control or role structure. My relationships with others in all work situations grow out of the work itself, the nature of our common goals, and the emerging functions of the corporate body. I move out of structure easily. I do not use power, position, or role to get things done (31, 42).

Discovery. I am learning how to manage and how to contribute to the self-regulation of the organization. Each situation is new and there are no permanent answers to any of the significant questions. Each moment, task, and development is new and is something to learn from. People come to see me as flexible, as wanting to learn and change, as a person who is constantly trying out new ideas and behaviors. I am excited about what there is to learn each morning as I come to work. We learn together. I do not try to teach others, train them, or tell them how to do their jobs. I do not see myself as the teacher, the coach or the manager. I see myself as a discoverer, joining others to discover new ways of working, new products, new methods, new forms of manufacturing, marketing, distributing, or planning. Life in the enterprise is an adventure, an exciting quest. People around me sense this spirit of adventure and it is contagious. We learn from each other. This is one of the advantages of working in our company.

Being personal. First of all, I am a person, unique, different from all others, with special ways of being, seeing, talking, relating, feeling, and working. I value this person-ness and like the fact that I am different. I am not trying to be like other people. I honor my own uniqueness and honor the special uniqueness of each other person that I contact in the organization. It is said of Don Shula, the football coach, that he never tries to change any of his players, but tries to create an environment in which each player will do even better what he does well. He is seen as a good manager. As a manager, I do not try to "act like a manager," or to take a role. I thrive on an environment in which each of us is a special person with special ways of being (29, 32).

Proactivity. I actively enter all situations to which I can contribute in some way. I try to "own" my own behavior and the situation I'm in and the team I'm on. I feel fully responsible for everything that is done, and do not abdicate that responsibility or push it off onto others. I do my share of the work, carry my share of the load, make my work playful, exciting and adventuresome. I am an entrepreneur in the situations that I give my energy to. I am proactive in contrast with being reactive. I create my own environment, my own job, and my way of doing the job. I do not try to reward or punish others, to motivate them, or to influence them. I join them in doing things from which we will all learn. I join others in finding out what we can do that will motivate us all. I have my own passionate path which I share with others and from which I get my abundant energy (9).

Superenergy and artistry. I discover what turns me on, generates my excitement, and keeps me passionate about life, work and play. I create an environment for me in the organization that nurtures me and creates my extra energy and excitement. My excitement and energy grow as I have more and more experience in the organization. I am an artist at what I do well. I trust myself and the organization to discover what I do best and to use my high artistry for the continuing benefit of the organization. I am thus proud of the organization and proud of my membership in it. The organization nurtures me and gives me energy. I get better and better at what I do. I feel good about my own artistic skills and allow others to have their artistry. It feels good to see others do well. I am not fearful, jealous, or mistrusting of others. I do not feel the need to be defensive or protective of myself. The organization is a good environment for me. I have been an important force in creating it (69).

Deep sense of corporate mission. The more I contribute to the emerging corporate mission, the more important I think it is. I am highly dedicated to this noble venture. I am fully dedicated to making the mission clear and to accomplishing it. The mission changes as we work together and as we get more perspective on our corporation and what it is doing in the world and the universe. I have had an important part in creating this mission and I continue to take part in creating it. I do not settle for tepid, ignoble, opportunistic, or cosmetic goals. Our transcending mission is far more important to me than subsidiary goals of profit, efficiency, public relations, cosmetic image, power, reputation, or temporary success. I am in it for the long haul. I want our goals to be real, significant, and of considerable importance to all of us, to the country and to the world in which we live. I want to feel wholly committed to these goals.

Giving credit to others. It is easy for me to give credit to others who work with me. In all of my years of consulting with business organizations, two notable people stand out. They were seen by others in and out of their companies as superior executives. One man had on his desk a sign: "You can do anything you want in this world as long as you don't need to take credit for it!" I consulted with him and his company for about a decade and I don't ever recall him claiming credit for anything. I remember his giving credit to all kinds of people, especially the people that reported to him. I recall a top-management team-development meeting in which the corporation president said to him, "Joe, I want to commend you for the fantastic job you did on the delta project!" The president said this with a strong feeling of admiration for what was obviously a superior performance. Joe's response: "Gee, Bob, that wasn't my job. The delta project was done by Tom." This giving credit was a common experience. I was greatly impressed with the genuineness of Joe's giving credit. While Joe sometimes did it verbally, the primary way in which it was communicated was in nonverbal and attitudinal ways. He gave freedom. He did not complain or criticize. He saw the strengths in others. He enjoyed others. He admired the special ways that they performed their jobs. Two outcomes were very significant. Managers tried hard to get to work on Joe's team. People who worked for a period of time on Joe's team were very likely to be promoted into significant jobs. Joe contributed to the self-esteem and competence of people around him. I will never forget him--or the importance of what I learned from him.

Expression. As a manager, I try to be expressive. I let others know how I feel, how I think, how I see things, and what my reactions are. Being open is a significant factor in creating trusting relationships with others. Trust is surely the most significant factor in being a good manager. It is especially important to share feelings, positive or negative. If I feel negative, it is important that I express this, as a feeling, and not translated into attempts to control or to blame. Managers who are proactive and who thus learn to create the environment around them that is nurturing tend to feel good and to create environments in which members usually have positive feelings. It is especially important to express positive feelings about others when they arise in me. Being spontaneous about this is especially valuable. I learn to express feelings as they arise in the moment. It is even more important to learn how to show feelings, so that people around me know me and how I feel.

Joining in the work. In earlier times, managers used to think of their role assignments as "getting work done through others"; "planning and organizing the work of others"; "motivating others to do work"; "evaluating the work of others"; "making work assignments to others"; and "seeing that the work gets done." As we learn more about effective management theory, we see the manager as a member of the work force, as a proactive contributor to what gets done, as a person with high energy, and as a person who contributes creative ideas to the team. I think that it is highly important that the person who is assigned by the organization to manage a function learn to be a functional member of the team. Thus, each member of the team is a manager, in a sense. Each member shares the excitement of contributing to quality, to planning, to creative reorganization of the work environment, to making a creative plan for sharing significant work, and to doing whatever it was that "management" used to be assigned to do. We are thus co-managers (34). It is a flat, lateral organization. We co-author the work and the organization (60).

Allowing mistakes. People who do make occasional errors are probably working too cautiously, fearfully, and uncreatively. As a manager, it is possible for me to admit to my errors when I make them, to allow and to empathize with others who make errors, to join with others in creating organizational forms that allow for learning from errors, reducing unnecessary errors, and not letting errors contribute to reduced quality of the organizational products (74).

Creating my own theory. As a manager, it is highly important for me to create a management/membership theory that is effective for me, that works for me, that grows as I grow, that gives me freedom to grow and be, and that contributes to my joy in being in the organization. My own autogenic theory is more effective for me than a theory that is provided by someone else, read about in a book, or taught by a professor or "trainer." My theory is my internal guidance system, that guides me in decision-making, helps me meet daily crises, and gives me a way of diagnosing organizational events. Having a theory works better than not having a theory. If my theory is simply that I work intuitively and meet each situation spontaneously as my impulse directs, then it is important that I know this, articulate it, see its advantages and disadvantages, know alternatives, and be comfortable in the application of my theory to organizational events to which I must relate. An effective theory for me is one that is (a) congruent with my internal dynamics and belief systems, (b) known by others as being my "way of being," (c) such as to contribute to my being seen by myself and by others as being effective, (d) appropriate to the wholeness reality of the organization of which I am a member/ manager, and (e) easily communicated to others who relate to me (54, 55).

Trust in self and in others. There is growing agreement among theorists and observers of the business world that trust is of primal importance in the enterprise. It is important to me and to the organization that I learn about trust. Learn the behaviors that contribute to trust and to distrust. Learn what I can do to increase my trust of myself and my trust of others. Learn how we can co-create environments that grow trust. Learn the relationships between trust and other aspects of organizational life (23, 46).

Collaborative environmental design. Chapter 11 considers the concept of environmental design. It is important for the manager to understand this principle and to see the advantages of a self-regulating system based upon all members co-authoring the environment in which they live. Management intervention in the lives of other members of an organization leads to many detrimental forces in the organization (64, 67).

Creative pilot projects. As a manager, I take action to create experimental trial programs or projects, taking an experimental attitude toward all self-regulatory efforts. A woman who owned a small restaurant with about 25 workers allowed every worker to arrange with anyone else to trade work times, to arrange hours of work, and to see that each position and function was covered. The key point was that no person had to check with "management" in making these arrangements. All trade-offs were handled by the workers concerned. Key points: no management time was involved, and persons took full responsibility to see that positions were covered. Each manager, at any level, can create similar solutions to any "management" issue in the operation (16).

Saying "yes." I have known two key managers who had an informal policy in answering questions from anyone in the system. The first response to any question was, "Yes, let's see how we can make that happen." They were both startlingly effective managers. One was in the lumber business and one was in retailing. Each was a visible contrast to other managers with whom I have consulted who seemed to be saying an initial variation of "no" to almost all questions. Variations of "yes" are: "Yes, what can I do to help?"; "Yes, I'll help you do it"; "Yes, I'll see if I can find some money in my budget for it"; "Yes, what should we do first?" or "Yes, I'll ask around to see if someone in my outfit can help you on it." Significant in the relationship is that I, as a manager, am seen as a supporter, as a "can do it" person, as one who takes action immediately, as an idea person. I am not seen as a stumbling block, as one who drags my feet, as one who is frightened, or as a person to avoid checking with. We have all seen plenty of "no" people in and out of management. It is refreshing to see people who respond with a "yes" and then are effective in taking action in support of the idea, and who move beyond the initial talk.

"What am I doing that helps create the problem?" When, as a manager, I see a problem or block in the operation, an important initial question to ask myself is, "What am I doing to help create this problem?" Managers often get in the way and are often seen by others as the person who gets in the way. Almost always the getting in the way is unintentional, partially unconscious, often an old habit or attitude that is underperceived by me, and perhaps seen by others who experience my blocking. It often helps to try-out with myself the hypothesis that I am the one in the way.

Sometimes it helps to simply ask a colleague, a subordinate, or a friend in the organization to tell me what I can do differently that would be useful or supportive. This query is often a significant first step in improving things, building new relationships, opening up honest dialogue, or building a new element in my management theory.

Focus on strengths. In entering a dialogue with an associate in the organization, it is useful to start out with an emphasis on strengths rather than on weaknesses, on the wellness in the system rather than the illness in the system. This perceptual and conversational habit is a useful way to look at myself as a manager. When I set out to improve my effectiveness, it is more useful to build on my strengths than to remove my weaknesses. Placing a value judgment on one’s own behavior and on the behavior of others is usually or always an ineffective habit. Performance appraisals and evaluation systems do more harm than they do good. Effective teams and organizations focus, instead, on artistry, wellness, strengths, creating one's passionate path, going with one's highest energy source, and seeking one's intrinsic motivations.

Celebration of difference. Diversity leads to strength. Each person is different from all other persons. Each worker does something in his or her own way. It is well to accept the differences in individuals with whom one works. Even better, it helps to celebrate these differences. People who feel celebrated by others are likely to build on the strength of their special, unique ways of doing something. As a manager, I like to see the special differences in persons, celebrate these differences, and make a place for these differences in the organization.

I have had three professional careers. I have been a college professor, a designer of organizations, and a consultant. By far the most informative of my careers was the experiences I created as a consultant for about twenty years. I deliberately chose to accept consulting requests from a maximum variety of organizations. I would accept an organization as a client much more willingly if the organization represented a new field unknown to me, a new challenge, a new place to learn, than if it were a client system with which I was familiar. My primary motivation in consulting was to learn new things and create new experiences. I believed that this format made me more useful to the organizations themselves, but I had no question as to my own priorities and my own motivations in seeking new organizations.

My professional experiences and style of consulting were ideal in making me useful to organizations. My college teaching in the field of organizational behavior predisposed me to be interested in theory and its application. My explicit and purposeful diversity in organizational experiences gave me a perspective that was invaluable to me and to my client organizations. Whenever I came to a "new" experience, I was able to remember several other organizations that had met such a crisis or issue and I was able to bring new perspective and new theory to the situation.

A skilled consultant with a powerful and relevant theory and a broad experiential perspective can be the most valuable resource that a corporation has at its disposal. Self-regulatory theory (see the discussion of Omicron theory in Chapter 12) is, I believe, the most useful and universal theory available to management at the present time.

What can such a consultant do? What can such consultants provide?

Perspective. There is no substitute for in-depth experience in a wide variety of organizations. The most powerful focus in a corporation is to examine an opportunity, product, setting, market, or design with a functional team composed of line management who have in-depth experience in the organization; internal consultants who have in-depth experience with the issue from the significant perspective of a theory-based, in-company, team-member stance; and an external consultant with wide theory-based experience in settings with different theories, styles, issues, and organizational settings. Collaborative teaming of such people will bring optimal focus on the issue. No issue is more filled with promise than the issue of how we can re-design or create anew an organizational structure and function that is optimally self-regulatory. The line people are apt to over-perceive the dangers and risks of reduced management and self-regulatory processes. The external people are more apt to see the advantages and possibilities of expanding self-regulation.

A universalizing theory base. There is no question in my mind as I review my experiences in working closely with several hundred external consultants that the critical difference that leads to effectiveness of external consultants is the universality of their theory. A high-quality consultant integrates the two factors: broad experience in practical situations, and an evolving general theory that transcends the specifics. Differences in organizational dynamics are easy to see. Similarities are much more difficult to perceive and relate to. Seeing similarities involves seeing below the apparent behaviors of the moment, generalizing from a wide variety of data that may look to the casual or non-theory eye to be dissimilar, calling upon widely disparate reading, sensory experience, memories, images, and the complex underground that is available to the theory-seasoned eye.

A transcending language. Languages, verbal and nonverbal, are exciting. The high-quality consultant is able to transcend the seemingly unbridgeable chasms between the world of abstract, laboratory theory and the world of bottom-line, crisis-derived realities of the practical business world. Each consultant creates a language that bridges these gaps. He or she sees the reality and the significance in each of the worlds and translates the practical business happenings to the abstract theorist and translates the overreaching theory to the business manager. There is nothing so practical as a good theory. What separates the high-quality supervisor from the ineffective one is the theory that he or she uses. The supervisor with a poorly-articulated or poorly-understood theory is helpless before the vast diversity of crises that happen hourly or every minute. The supervisor with an autogenic, well-integrated and internalized theory knows how to perceive each crisis and event. The excellent theory makes the world of the supervisor relatively free of risk, exciting in its diversity, an opportunity for learning, and an opportunity to use imagination in applying the theory. The theory is an inner guidance system that tells the supervisor or manager how to journey along the road. The manager with an inadequate theory lives in a mine-field or a jungle (choose your metaphor). The manager with an adequate internalized theory is continually in friendly and familiar territory. The effective supervisor doesn't talk his or her way through an emergency. He or she may never talk about the theory, but simply acts with trust, wisdom, and sureness. I do not mean to imply that it is all that simple. I am saying that the work day will be full of learning and challenge and fun. Not tension, anxiety, and dysfunctional stress.

Relative perceptual freedom. The external consultant is more free than the line manager to take exploratory perceptual shifts in looking at the issue, the event or the forecast. The line manager is more likely to be caught up in the pressure of an immediate solution, and in old habits of perceiving. The internal or external consultant is presumably more free to look at alternative options, to image through alternative solutions and theories, to look with "fresh eyes," to view with a larger context, or to try out different ways of seeing the event. Effective action comes from perceptual shifts, from seeing the situation with new eyes, from new perspectives. Collaborative teaming allows many people to look at the event and compare various perceptual stances, enriching the options, seeing the whole, engaging in constructive play and fantasy, trying out alternative theories.

Collaboration. Like the effective manager, the effective consultant is a collaborator. He or she works with the system, joins it as a full member, gets involved in the issues, works with everyone concerned. He or she joins the team. Collaboration is at the heart of the self-regulatory process.

Flow. As a consultant coming into the system, I try to get the feel of the turf, to sense the vibrations in the team or company, to tune in to the climate, to empathize with the issues as they are seen by company members. I see what is, join what is, celebrate the people that are on the team, and do not try to push the river. The best self-regulatory systems move beyond power, role, authority, and the conventional accouterments of organizational life. Effective people do not resort to power, influence or role to get things done. It is especially important for the consultant to understand this.

Discovery. Like everyone else, the consultant is here to learn. The consultant does not come in with the --answers, to teach the people how to do it, to model ways of managing or being, to remedy what is wrong with the system, or to heal the ailing work organization. As a consultant, I come in to the situation, just as every other person does, to discover new and fresh options. Consulting is a collaborative quest, an adventure, a creative searching. Discovering is the central process of all good business action. Discovering is the edge process, the process that differentiates the high-quality companies from the others, the poker players from the ribbon clerks (67).

Being personal. It is especially significant for the consultant to understand how to be a person and not a role. The people in the system may try to box the consultant into a role--of expert, authority, model, theorist, process observer, arbitrator, conflict manager, teacher, mediator. Whatever. The consultant is a person--a person who acts as a person, feels, thinks, hurts, enjoys, gets angry, empathizes, is jealous, needs love--is a person. As a consultant, I am most effective when I show this person-ness and am fully into the situation with all of me (43).

Proactivity. If I am a consultant it is important that I take full responsibility for owning the issues that confront us. I cannot retreat into a "resource" stance, a disinterested process stance, a "gee, you guys have a problem" posture. I do my share of the work, take responsibility for working on the issue. I am proactive, rather than reactive. I create the environment in each moment. I become, for the moment or the hour or the day, a full member of the organization.

Superenergy and artistry. Like the manager and the worker, as a consultant I share my excitement, high energies, and passion with the team and the company. I bring it all with me. I hold nothing back. I do not withdraw into a proactive, observer role. I get my feet wet and my ego bruised. I get into the action. I come to play, as the ballplayers say. I am here. I share the risk, the excitement and the successes.

Deep sense of corporate mission. As a consultant, I take full responsibility for what the corporation is doing. I take on the corporate mission and goals. I cannot disown them. I am working as hard as anyone else for the success of the company with whom I am consulting. It is important that I work only for companies that have noble, enlightened, worthy, moral, spiritual goals that fit my view of my own passionate path and spiritual journey. I am fully into the spiritual journey of the company with whom I am working (68).

Celebration of the organization. Personally, I believe that a consultant does not come in to change the organization. The company that requests my presence is telling me: We want to be even better than we are. We are perceptive enough to know an excellent consultant when we hear of one. When we ask you to join us for a while, we are saying something good about you and about us. As a consultant, I am responsive to this message. I celebrate the organization for what it is and what it has accomplished. I honor the people in the company for having a noble social goal, which I join for a time. I believe that I have abundant skills and energy and that I will make the company even better than it is, helping it to see its strengths, sharpening its emerging theory, being more effective, creating an even more rich and nurturing environment for everyone (32).

Self-regulatory systems are appropriate in any human organization: the church, the workplace, the family, the school, the government. More than any other single factor in the situation, the trust level of the management determines the effectiveness of the self-regulation.

Management tends to be fearful of trying out self-regulation in very large systems where the practical issues seem insurmountable, in potentially dangerous systems where the risks seem too great. When management is fearful enough then any risk is too great, and too dangerous to take. If management is trusting enough, then self-management is appropriate in a situation, no matter how large or how "dangerous" (11).

In a self-regulatory environment, children at the very earliest age learn to eat when they are hungry, go to sleep when they are tired, cry when they are hurting, and smile when they are happy. Families have had such dramatic success in high-trust home environments, that parents who are open to experimentation can be sure that self-regulatory environments will work. They are safer, build higher self-esteem, produce more collaborative behavior, produce more learning, and certainly require less parenting. Parents and children learn to treat each other like persons rather than as parents, children, possessions, power figures, dependents or role-locked objects. They learn to be open, honest, and direct with each other and not to use manipulative games and strategies with each other. They learn to learn together and be together, rather than to persuade, influence, reward or punish each other. They learn to collaborate and to be interdependent rather than to control, boss, or be counteraggressive with each other. This concept is discussed at length in the Trust book (46).

A self-regulatory home is the best preparation for any kind of adult environment, especially for autocratic ones. I am intimately familiar with several homes that have applied TORI theory to home management, and have seen the powerful effects of such home environments. In the self-regulatory home, both children and parents learn the essential behaviors that are useful in any social environment: listening co others, proactive expression of feelings and wants, creative and shared decision-making, handling conflicts with peers, giving and receiving affection and intimacy, taking others into consideration when planning actions, working with others in fixing meals, doing chores, making or fixing toys, planning vacations, living creatively with diversity in age and values, and doing many actions that are like living in any other institution (11).

Such children get along very well in alternative schools, experimental businesses, cooperative neighborhoods, and other self-regulatory systems. The test, it seemed to us, was how they got along in the Army, autocratic school systems, repressive competitive sports, and systems where they had little use for self-regulatory skills. It turns out that they get along very well. Surprisingly so. Several illustrations come to mind. A particularly impressive and quite typical illustration is what happened with John when he went to a first grade public school in La Jolla. La Jolla has a highly-benevolent and autocratic system, competitive, orderly, disciplined, and highly programmed. Like other such schools, they have many ways of encouraging competition. They gave a "citizen of the class" award to a student each month in each classroom. At the end of the year, they elect a citizen of each class and a citizen of the whole school. One Thursday, a week following the end of the school year, Lorraine heard from some impressed mother about John winning the "whole school" award. When she got home, she asked John, "What's this I hear about your big award?" John asked, "What award?" Lorraine said it was the school award in the final assembly on Thursday just five minutes before he got home from school, which was a block and a half from home. She asked him why he didn't mention it when he got home. His reply: "I forgot about it!" So much for the powerful effects of artificial reward systems on free and self-regulatory children (7, 11, 46)!

We got a formal letter from the principal congratulating us on our "home training program," saying that the award was based upon "citizenship" and character traits such as obedience, keeping his desk neat, coming in from recess on time, keeping quiet in class, being courteous to teachers and other students, and for some other behaviors, none of which we valued. We had deliberately not done any training or education of the children, allowing them to learn relevant skills and behaviors from our self-regulatory system. I asked John about the award. He said that when the teacher asked them to be quiet or to come in from recess in ten minutes he would do so, but that often he was the only one who responded to the teacher. We and he had similar impressions about the homes of the other kids in the class. They had all been punished for disobedience, for disorderly behavior, for not coming in to dinner on time, and many similar behaviors. Kids that are punished and "taught" in classic and formal ways are likely to be resistant and rebellious (counterdependent) in situations where adults make demands on them. Never having been punished prior to his classroom experience, John was quietly courteous, orderly and responsive because he was "naturally" that way with people, having learned in a collaborative, self-regulatory environment that these behaviors were ones that were successful and satisfactory. That he stood out in school is a commentary on self-regulatory systems and their great effectiveness as compared to normal "managed" home environments.

A useful way for readers of this book to try out their own responses in self-regulatory environments is to try these out in the home environments (11).

In some ways, Omicron is a spiritual theory. The church is thought to be, by itself and by others, as the place nearest to the wholeness, the universe, the spiritual, the enduring allness. If we can't get in touch with the infinite in the worship place, then were will we find it?

Over the years, I have been a consultant with churches of many denominations, from the local parish to the national headquarters. I had consulted with business for a number of years and was looking forward to working with churches, because I was much more interested in the church, really, and I thought that my emerging Trust Level theory would be much more readily seen as appropriate to the church than to profit motivated business. Consulting with the National Council of Churches one day, I was talking with a number of ministers about this congruence of trust management with the aims of the early church. I expressed my surprise at seeing so much fear-based management and so much resistance, circumvention, depersonalization, distortion, deception, and behaviors that were quite comparable to business systems. It was difficult for me to understand un-loving behavior in the place dedicated to Jesus. One of the ministers said, "Yes, but look what happened to Christ." Welcome to the world of "reality!" Another time, I had occasion to listen closely to the top management of churches and of businesses on two successive weekends. I rode with some corporation presidents from the airport to the session of an NTL President's conference. The next weekend, I rode with some top leaders of Protestant denominations to an NTL church leaders' conference. In their free time, the business leaders talked about the spirituality of the time, the responsibility of business in community affairs, the role of business in determining morality in American life, and other, similar topics, reflecting an amazing amount of leadership and concern. The next week the comparable church leaders, in their free time, spent the hour talking about the difficulties of fund-raising, building efficient buildings, hiring efficient secretaries, and providing retirement pensions in the church. The difference in the two groups is understandable, but disquieting. I have had these impressions confirmed many times: being involved in the church in no way guarantees that people's concerns will move toward matters of the spirit, the allness, the universals, or the enduring.

What seems to be the case is that organizational realities have to do with management, planning, controls and policy. These concerns take precedence unless we can create systems that rise above the trivial and irrelevant, that move into things that matter. Experiments in churches with which I have consulted demonstrate that congregations can become much more self-regulatory. This experience creates concerns for mission, spiritual journeys, proactivity, community, and the universals. The same processes and directions occur in the business community.

Preoccupation with authority, hierarchy, persuasion, role, rewards, fear, and cosmetic factors seems even more firmly established in the church than in the workplace. The church does, with new awareness, move into the more "spiritual" areas of self-regulation. Progress on these dimensions is very promising at all levels of church management.

Despite the fact that, compared with business systems, the educational system is discouragingly conservative and autocratic, there are encouraging signs of self-regulation in experimental and alternative schools (7, 13, 15, 22, 29, 32, 47, 53, 67, 68).

In the classic public school, the orientium is upon the column-1 environments. The focus is upon competition. The teacher and the administrator are dominant in the hierarchy. The emphasis is upon teaching rather than upon learning. An observer can almost always tell who is in the role of the "teacher." Children are controlled by rewards and punishment. As I heard a famous educator say the other day in a speech: "The smell of the schoolroom is fear." And the emphasis is upon efficiency, order, and grades, none of which are relevant to the learning processes (47).

The exceptions to the above are numerous and promising. I have visited with and consulted with many school systems. I visited one the other day, observing a fourth grade classroom in a school in a highly-conservative school district known for its law-and-order philosophy. I apologized to the teacher, saying that I would be happy to observe during the morning and keep out of his way. His reply was that he would enjoy talking with me because his schoolroom usually took care of itself and had long ago moved beyond depending on him for managing the learning. Only once during the morning did one of the students come to him to talk. Most of the children spent all morning on some aspects of building a set of drawings on the walls all around the room, depicting modern history from the time of Christ to the present. They were comparing notes on dates, trying to apportion space appropriately on the wall. They had a number of encyclopedias on the floor and found different dates for the Holy Roman Empire. One of them asked the teacher which date was correct. He advised them to go down to the librarian because he didn't know. Another group was devising a math game that they had been working on for some time. These and several other events clearly indicate d that this was one of the most truly self-managing classrooms that I had ever experienced. I asked if he had any problems with this style of learning management. He said he had only two problems he could think of. One was that the students learned too fast. Teachers in the upper grades, who taught from workbooks, complained that his students went ahead too rapidly and got into the things they were supposed to learn in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades. This was a problem for the other teachers. A second problem was that students came too early and stayed too late in the classroom. He finally had to make the first rule he had ever made in a classroom. Because the school district did not allow students in classrooms when teachers were not present, he finally made a rule that kids couldn’t come in before 7:00 in the morning nor stay after 5:00 in the evening. "And another thing, I’ll come only from 9 to 12 on Saturday. No more of this all Saturday afternoon stuff" (53,67,68,73).

These "complaints" were very similar to situations where I had seen business managers try self-regulatory models in the company. People worked long into the evening (without overtime pay), and productivity shot up. These "problems" are typical outcomes of self-regulatory systems (53).

I have consulted with a number of government programs and national agencies in Washington, D.C., and in Ottawa. There is some resistance on the part of conservative management and administration to reducing formal management controls. Also there is some experimentation with far-reaching results.

An interesting observation, corroborated from talking with other experienced consultants, is related to defense and distrust in systems and resulting resistance to self-regulatory ideas. Government managers say it would be much easier in schools and in business to try self-management, because neither of these institutions have the comparable interference from taxpayers and from top government officials who play politics. Business management says it would be much easier in government and in the schools because neither of these institutions "have to meet a bottom line" and have not as much at stake. School management says that it would be much easier in business and government because they are working with adults. And "you can, of course, trust adults much more readily than you can trust kids." Grass is always greener. And defenses are easily mobilized.

I find imaginative, courageous, far-seeing management in churches, schools, government, and business who are trying out self-regulatory models with great success. Successes are so convincing that it will not be long before many more managers engage in similar experimentation (45, 53).

From the standpoint of readiness for self-regulatory system management, all people systems are much more similar than they are different. In the significant ways (appropriateness of self-regulation) people systems and people problems are the same.

In doing some spot interviews to study in depth the effects of our programs at the National Training Laboratories, I called on a Superintendent of Schools of a large urban school system. I asked him what he had learned during his three-week intensive program at Bethel, Maine. He said that it was very difficult to pin down his learnings to something specific. He said that there was one thing he was sure of. When he got back to his office from the summer program, he got a small round table and placed it in the center of his spacious office. Whenever anyone came in to see him, he always got up from behind his desk, walked to the door to meet the person and sat down with his guest at the round table. I asked if this had made any difference in his relationships. He said, "Jack, this makes all the difference. If I had only learned this one thing at Bethel, it was well worth the time and money." Further discussion indicated that no one had suggested this particular idea. He had thought of it when he got back from the program. I suspected, as did he, that many things went on in him, including attitude changes, and these changes provided an inner environment for him that produced the idea. His relationships changed because he came out from behind his defensive desk, and also because he had a number of different attitudes toward his callers. His "let's sit down and chat as equals and collaborate on a solution" attitudes were communicated to his colleagues. The table sitting symbolized this massive change in his attitude toward colleagues (71).

For several years, I was a consultant for a corporation president who was known for his innovative and significant management ideas. During a meeting of the top management team, we discussed the growing issue of increasing thefts at a company assembly plant. Because so many of the components were valuable and small, workers were taking them with them in their pockets, brassieres, and lunch pails and managing in some way to pilfer a great deal of material. This was an increasing factor in the profit picture. As the pilfering increased, management became more and more inventive in circumventing the controls. During our team sessions, we had, from time to time, talked about self-regulatory management and high-trust systems, concepts that I had discussed in my writings. At one point, management was seriously considering two alternatives as solutions to the theft problem. One was to institute a number of required training programs in values clarification around stealing. Another solution that came from the management who had been talking about trust-level theory was to try discontinuing all of the security systems. Finally, the president of the company, who has a reputation of being a very honest and caring person, called a meeting of all of the assembly workers in the plant.

He announced a decision to implement a new high-trust policy, and, among other things, to take away all of the security systems. He gave figures about the thefts, and talked briefly and very clearly about the theory the management team was using. Though accurate figures on thefts are not easy to get quickly, for a number of reasons, it soon became clear that the thefts dropped to a figure close to zero following the dramatic new policy change.

It has long been my observation that locks, regulations, punishments, and security systems, in a very real sense, produce the stealing, which is an expression of resentment of low-trust management. Where we have tried changes in the low-trust environment, changes have been made in behaviors in the system. The environment produces the system behaviors (58).

One of the single most effective, powerful, and immediately applicable principles of Omicron theory centers upon the use of environmental designs. Used effectively, a collaborative environmental design pays off and shows visible results. The following are some simple guidelines for (a) examining your own business environment for its effectiveness, or (b) re-designing new environments aimed at increased productivity and product quality.

Focus upon self-regulation. Does the proposed new design reduce the number of management and supervisory actions? Does the new design make it easier for all concerned to see the nature of the job and what is going wrong? Is it easy to take immediate action at the most local level, without having to consult others, especially higher management? Is it easy to focus high energy on the critical point in the production, assembly, planning, creative task?

Focus upon productive and creative work. Have we designed the work environment so that people who are on a passionate path of high energy can find a meaningful, challenging, fulfilling job? I am assuming that people who are really into their high-energy pathways will enjoy work that arises from it. This matching of jobs and pathways is at the heart of creative, high-performance business. I believe that it is a mistake to focus initially and primarily on the "quality of work life." Lightly-managed people or people in self-regulatory systems who are doing fulfilling work will create their work-life quality. They don't need to be told how to do it. And they probably don't need others to create the environment for them. I'm certainly not against efforts to improve the quality of work life to the degree that we continue to design work environments that prevent people from finding passionate paths that match passionate work (44).

Collaborative creation of the environment. Collaborativeness is a primary part of the effective work environment. It is difficult to plan for people that their work be collaborative. We are all in it together. Self-regulation is collaborative action, regulating everything that is relevant to doing quality work and sustaining quality lives. A key problem is the lack of collaboration skill and experience in our individualistic, hierarchical and competitive culture. It is possible, however. Especially in small units as a start. An office force, a work team, a planning group, an assembly unit, any relatively small group that works together in some interdependent way.

Effective work units. There is something magic about the size six. I have consulted with several companies who have set up experimental production groups of six with no supervisors. In my experience, this has always worked well, sometimes with success that has surprised observers and analysts. A challenging task facing companies who are trying self-regulatory systems is the creative design of work environments that involve sub-units of five or six people who are interdependent with other similar groups. Interdependent and requiring little "managing" of the inter-group collaboration.

I have worked with large audiences of 5,000 or more. If I have them arrange themselves in groups of six (they can easily self-manage this!), and meet on a clear task for five or six minutes, each person will talk and contribute. I have occasionally asked the large audience at the end of this stage of work with the large group: "Raise your hand if you didn't get a chance to talk." I have seldom had a hand raised. If I compose the audience into groups of seven and ask the same question, I'm likely to get 50 to 100 hands raised, the number of hands depending upon several factors related to size ( 73 ) .

For instance, I have consulted with a number of business, educational, and government systems that have experimented with open space in various ways. Sometimes these experiments are extremely successful and sometimes they fail. It seems to depend on how the experiment is seen by the members of the system. If members see that they are truly involved in creating the space, deciding how it will be planned and whether or not they want open space to begin with, the members are likely to see the experiment as likely to be successful and look for ways of making it work. Under certain conditions, the open space is resisted, sabotaged, or unused: if members had little part in the decision, if they had no part in planning the use of the space, and if they have had little time to explore and discover the idea of open space. It is, of course, important to gather data on perceptions at all stages of the planning, and to base plans on the perceptions of the participants. Perceptions are important. They are likely to determine feelings and actions. They can be changed.

Optimal visibility of everything relevant. It is well to design the physical and psychological environment in such a way that all the significant factors and changes in them are always visible as much as is possible. Everyone involved must be able to see the relationship between the work one's unit is doing and factors such as corporate policy, customer needs, long-range plans, management hopes, the total product and product policies, feelings and perceptions of all the effort, and changes that are not prohibitive in cost, disruption, or emotional upheaval.

Some things are easy to change and pay off quickly. We can change the location of furniture, ways of making decisions, times of meetings, schedules, intra-group agreements, work assignments, and other things that are under our control.

Start with us. A good place to start is to examine the feelings and perceptions in our own group. What annoys us? What gets in our way? What do we like about what we do? What are things that others do that are helpful to us?

Put a red flag on efforts to change others. It is difficult (impossible?) to change the perceptions and attitudes of others in coordinate work groups, in top management, in customers, in persons out of our work group. It is easier to change ourselves.

It is helpful to assume that we are responsible for our own environment and that we can change it in any way we wish. To assume that we ourselves create our own helping forces and our hindering forces. To assume that it is possible to create the kind of environment we wish and that this environment will make our lives more exciting and challenging.

Free the artists. Let's get out of each other's way. Let's make it easy for people to discover what they are really good at and to do it. If possible, start by removing constraints, getting things out of the way, reducing barriers.

It is not helpful to put pressures on workers to do what others think they are good at or should do. It is not helpful to try to get people to work at something for "their own good," to challenge them, to enrich them. It is best to allow workers to choose what they want to work on, to change their minds, to fail, to experiment, to do things their own way, to choose their work partners, to choose their locations, to pick their own furniture, tools, and work environment.

Let's free the artist in each of us to do what we do best and to continue to break through to new goals of excellence.

Reducing the familiar constraints. There are certain factors that, when reduced, will enhance the quality of performance and productivity:

1. Special training. Designing environments in which the training occurs in the work setting, where performance is improved in the work itself.
2. Role differentiation. Creating work situations with highly differentiated roles is likely to be rigidifying, increase boredom, produce dehumanizing constriction, and increase the error.
3. Punishment. There is never a situation in which punishment built in to the system is productive or enhancing. Punishment produces neurotic behavior, delayed anxiety, correlative hostility, repression, reduced self-esteem, and a variety of side effects and latent disorders that are disabling. Punishment programs also require someone to administer the punishment, someone to decide who gets punished, and someone to administer all of the serendipitous disabling effects. Punishment adds to the management load (47).
4. Quality control. Effective systems design quality into the system, self-corrective processes, individual responsibility for quality, automatic checks on quality. Quality is thus not "managed."
5. Checking up. Having people check on people is a negative force. Checking produces errors, resentment, cover-up, circumvention of the checker, faking of reports, and other ancillary effects, mostly negative. Building in machines that provide information on errors to the worker himself or herself is very useful. It is like using a biofeedback machine. Skilled users can determine accuracy and change performance to increase accuracy. Checking up need not be an interpersonal or a management process.
6. Extrinsic rewards. Attempts to artificially bolster the motivations of workers by contests, piece work, praise, and special bonuses tend to not work in the long run and to interfere with natural-system conditions that are designed to optimize intrinsic and "natural" rewards residual in the work itself and in the organization itself.
7. Fatigue and boredom. It is worth the effort to engineer work environments and work systems that are intrinsically exciting and challenging and not designed for fatigue and boredom.
8. Supervision and management. It is especially cost effective to design work that requires little or no supervision or management, work processes that manage themselves or that collaborative workers, with no extra effort, can find excitement in "managing" and coordinating.

Minimum of intervention. To be most effective, the initiation and implementation of the environmental design must come from the system itself (the team, the office, the division) and not as an "intervention" from an outside consultant, from corporate headquarters, from a special in-house "environmental design group," or from any external source. Individuals and groups have resistance to others "intervening" in their lives, however good the intentions and expertness of the interventionists.

The Omicron orientation is described in this trilogy. What this orientation means for the person is described in The Passionate Path (17). What it means for the group and the organization is described in this book. What it means for the larger universal or world picture is described in Touching the Universe (19). Listed in the appendix, in Section A, are 37 other books which describe aspects of this unitary, wholeness-centered viewpoint. These are the first of a longer series of books and articles which will represent the creative efforts and collaboration of our TORI, Astron, and Omicron communities.

Our way of working and playing together is an illustration of our Omicron orientation and congruent with it. We are a self-regulatory system, exploring the attitudes and behaviors listed in column 2 of Table 1. orientations that have been explored throughout this book.

We are discovering how to collaborate. In looking at the universe and each aspect of it. Thus the theory as it develops applies to managing and gardening, breathing and walking, cells and processes, winds and windmills, archeology and epistemology--the universe of matter, energy,-and life. We see this journey towards living with and understanding the allness as exciting, adventuresome, and possible. We see these books as an invitation to collaboration. The theory is designed for use. We are in the process of creating both a science and an engineering application.

We are discovering how to be in harmony with the allness and with each member of the universal family of forms. We are getting into the flow. In interaction with us, the theory is emerging, is assuming a life of its own, is encompassing and guiding our theory-construction efforts. All forms have structure, but the most nurturing and productive structure is an emerging, flowing one. Our company corporation, Astron, is in the process of happening, being created, omicronizing itself. It is our best shot, up to now, at a self-regulating organization (24, 31).

We are discovering how to discover. Believing that trust is all pervasive and a condition of high productivity, we are discovering how to trust and how trust applies to organizing. Omicron is an extension of trust level theory (23, 46). Every few months, one of us exclaims at the major changes that have happened to us and to the "structure" of the theory. I see this flexibility as a strength, built in to the theory. How to keep this flexibility and docility into the system and into the formulation is something we intentionally want to discover. We think we have some leads.

We are discovering how to create an idiosyncratic theory (24), how to keep it creatively personal, and at the same time to make it universal, applicable to the allness. Each of us creates his or her own theory. This is true of each person who uses the theory in some way. A theory (at least a theory like Omicron) is a personal matter, created by the person, used by the person in a unique way indigenous to the person, grown into the person's life, becoming an inner guidance system that is custom designed for the person's unique path.

We are discovering how to be creatively proactive, how to move into a full relationship in the organization, doing precisely what is good for you and precisely what is good for the organization, making this match between person and community a creative and synergetic one. Despite popular biases and beliefs, it is possible to be fully into the organization with full freedom and full proactivity, and with no infringement. And with no premium upon conformity and obedience. The creatively self-regulatory organization solves this omnipresent dilemma in the conventional organization.

We are discovering how to provide for the release of transcendent superenergy, and how to tap into mystical and intuitive powers beyond the usual reach of "normal" states of work and play. Omicron is essentially a perceptual theory, oriented toward a perceptual shift as the medium and the mechanism for transformational change. Omicron is an "orientation," a perceptual stance toward experience and reality, toward diagnosis and action, toward cognition and intuition, toward theory and understanding. It assumes that transcendent and mystical experiences are normal for everyone, available to each person for the tuning in, easy to reach for those who assume it is easy to reach (who trust).

We are discovering how to find universals in theory (54, 55), fantasy, and practice. How to integrate a deep sense of corporate and community mission into the practices of work and play, worship and government. How to sense and achieve the visionary, holistic, spiritual, noble, beyond wellness, nirvanic, and universal missions and states that all beings, human and non-human, are evolving toward and are "working" toward on a daily or yearly basis. In other words, what the "real" corporate goals are.

We are not discovering techniques, gimmicks, methods, or panaceas. We are discovering how to get into the universal flow, the emerging evolution of autogenic process, the "natural food" of nurturing environments. We are looking beyond technology, beyond "what to do on Monday morning," beyond prescriptions, beyond remedies and pain killers. We are looking for universals.

We are discovering the allness and the wholeness, a truly mego-diagnostic view of allness, a synergy of fantasy and the rational. Diagnosis is "half the battle," which is no battle. Life is a love affair, and Omicron is an orientation that points us in the direction of love. Corporate activity, like all other activity, is playing and loving, not working and fighting. The corporate world is not a jungle, a mine field, a tough battle against superior odds. It is a gentle place, a playground, a love affair, a wonder-land, a fulfillment of fantasy, a passionate pathway, a spiritual journey. Come to think of it, the company is either a mine field or a love affair. Perception leads the way and creates the reality. What you see is what you get. I create the playground or the battle. There is a choice. And I make it.

The seven Omicron processes, that parallel the seven indices on the self-regulatory person or organization, are listed in the first column of Table 3. Their seven counterprocesses, antithetical orientations, are listed in the first column of Table 4.

These seven Omicron processes synergize into a macroenvironment that supports all of the self-regulatory processes discussed in this book. As Table 3 indicates, these processes (the general atmosphere or climate of the person or the organization) are translated by the members of the corporate body into clusters, programs, collective activities such as those listed on the second column of each table. Further, a given person in the system translates these orientations and programs into specific behaviors (called TORI behaviors in the Trust (46) book). Depending upon the earlier orientations, the general state of the inner person or the inner organization is more or less proactive or reactive. This is the simplest and most oversimplified way of talking about inner directional states. If a person or a system is trusting (or wholeness-oriented or proactive) then it is more likely that all these orientations, perceptions, and behaviors reinforce each other, feed back on the system, support each other in self-fulfilling ways, and express themselves in the outcomes listed in the last column in each of the two tables.

It is assumed that general positive outcomes are highly correlated. Low correlations obtained in practice are produced by several factors: lack of precision of measurement; impurity of any of the general states talked about in any of the columns; lack of validity of the measurements (we are never sure what we are measuring or what the variable finally is); and other relatively unknown factors.

The seven Omicron orientations or processes are difficult to describe in words. At the present time, we are describing them in the following ways:

1. Wholizing. All forms and processes continuously move toward greater wholeness. At any given time, the manager or worker who sees this wholeness is likely to be more effective. Seeing this continual evolution towards wholeness, integration, harmony, synergy, balance, and unity is helpful in diagnosis, parenting, and all other forms of human interaction. As the ecologists say, everything relates to everything. It takes more than a lifetime for anyone to see the awesome import of this allness view (48,49, 51).
2. Emerging. Persons and organizations are "dynamic," as are all forms of nature, including plants and rocks. The organization occurs in a continuous, evolutionary, unprogrammed, non-linear, and unplanned flow of process. We are always "in process." In truth, any classification or boxing of people or functions is likely to staple and mutilate them, distort their true nature, and, worse, interfere with the natural, organic, self-regulatory life processes (38).
3. Discovering. Persons and organizations are always in the delightful process of discovering themselves. This is true of the universe itself. And of God. And of rocks and flowers. And of Omicron. Life is a quest. An adventure. A search. It is not telling, teaching, imposing, persuading. Out of this orientation comes creativity, transformation, new life, new ideas, new and unknown forms of organization, and new products and processes that are as yet unformed or unimagined (14, 15).
4. Being. All forms of matter, energy and life create and discover a zone of essence, a centering and unifying force field, a being, an identity, a uniqueness that differentiates it from all other forms of matter, energy and life. This applies to persons and to organizations. Organizations are as unique as persons. Managers and workers who sense this inner being and essence of the company are more effective in relating productively to the corporate body. The job of each member is to nourish, enhance, and bring to flower this being, from which all else flows (6).
5. Pathing. Each person and organization discovers a unique path which optimizes the creativity, energy, productivity, and wellness of the organization. This unique directionality defines the nature of the person and of the organization. Nurturing this path, enriching the path, and change tuning the pather as the environment changes are the roads to spiritual enrichment as well as high productivity. Vitalizing this journey is a way of tapping into a universal pool of love, energy, passion and knowledge. Putting my or our passions into these paths is the route to transcendent energy and nirvanic states, as well as to organizational vitality (3, 36, 37, 39).
6. Transcending. Each person and organization is continually moving beyond old states, current forms, limitations of the moment, = current form of energy. The shifting may be viewed or described as perceptual, vibrational, chemical, or transcendent. This transformation is primarily a release from some form of entrapment or stability. Self-regulation moves the system into transcendence and is part of the transformational process. This process is organic and natural (4).
7. Universalizing. All persons and organizations, as with all other forms, are continually moving in the direction of universal form, metaphor, prototype, archetype, or fantasy. The inner search for essence and the outer journey toward universality arrive at the same "reality." When each search is in its fullness, the journeys are congruent. The most effective managers and workers are those who get in touch with these allness metaphors and realities, relate them to ongoing organizational issues, get the largest perspectives on the task of the organization, and live out the metaphors which contain the richest guidelines for being (40).

Self-regulation and proactivity in the person and in the organization occur when these seven Omicron processes are nurtured and brought into consciousness. The words we are using are often awkward and perhaps esoteric or neologistic. Whatever words one uses, or preferably without words, the person or the organization that somehow tunes in to the basic processes is likely to move into transcending forms of selfregulation.

Such processes lead directly to higher profits, greater productivity, higher quality of product, greater creativity, higher levels beyond wellness, and transcending vitality in the person and in the organization.

The theory is effective both in the short term and in the long haul. I am simply using unfamiliar words for what I have seen the most effective organizations actually doing.

Self-regulation is the definitive and organic process in all forms from the universe to the cell, from the person to the organizations, from the intergallactic world to the sub-atomic world (49, 61).

The following forty books are being prepared for publication by members of the TORI-Astron Corporation, as a collaborative enterprise in theory creation. They illustrate idiosyncratic views of the Omicron orientation, and applications of the theory to aspects of contemporary life. An asterisk indicates that the manuscript is finished and being revised. A double asterisk indicates that the author prepared the manuscript in partial fulfillment of requirements for a doctorate in the Omicron Institute and has been granted the Ph.D. in Organizational Development.

1. Albrecht, Jay. An Omicron view of sexuality.

2. Armistead, David. Wholesport: An Omicron view of athletic ventures.

3. Armistead, Suzanne. An Omicron adventure in living.

4. Barley, Donald J. Co-visioning: Collaborating in Omicron.

5. Barr, Bruce. Omicron at work and play: The organization.

6.* Beakey, Diane. The dream clock.

7. Brooks-Schoenberg, Kathy. The gifting child.

8. Cirincione, Dominic. Cultural forces in the work organization: An Omicron View.

9.* Cheyunski, Fred. Proactivity: An Omicron orientation.

10.** Christensen, Don. Emerging men: Omicron lives.

11.* Clarke, Richard. The Omicron child in the Omicron universe.

12.** Colladay, Steve. The high trust health care executive.

13. Conlon, Patrick. Dean for a day: An Omicron fantasy.

14. Davis, Carolyn. Festive food: Dinner with Omicron.

15. Dodgen, Betty. The high trust school: An Omicron alternative.

16. Duvivier, Blanche. Creativity and collaboration.

17.* Gibb, Jack R. The passionate path: An Omicron view of the person.

18.* —The magic of self-regulation: Omicron in the organization.

19.* —The age of transcendence: An Omicron view of the universe.

20. Gibb, Lorraine M. Astronarts: An Omicron view of creativity.

21.* Gibbs, Jeff. The wave nature: Seeing harmony in all things.

22. Hahsen, Barbara. Transformation in the schools.

23.** Harris, Jackie and Walker, Phillip R. Trusting you and your organization.

24. Johnson, Barry. Omicron discoveries: An adventure in the world of business.

25. Khalili, Nasser. The business organization as a spiritual journey.

26.** Kirsch, Susan. Trust and energy awareness.

27. Martine, Don. High trust in a business organization.

28. Nardi, Jo Marie. Imagine That! An Omicron view of imagery.

29. Novak, Patricia. Wholizing learning through wholizing self.

30.* Parker, Rob. Can you trust the telephone? Talking in Omicron.

31.** Peruniak, Bill. The Northwest Odyssey: A flowcentered view of-management.

32.* Powell, Kathy. The Elf's small feet: The Omicron classroom.

33.** Starchuk, Elizabeth and Starchuk, Tricia. Effective nursing: A wholistic view.

34. Raynor, Doug. Co-managing the enterprise.

35. Renjilian, Jean. The collaborative work environment.

36. Sumner, Jennifer. Seeing my way clear: An Omicron look.

37. Tangvald, Claire. Living and transcending: In search of clarity.

38. Waller, Marilyn. Polarity, paradox, and transcendence.

39. Whittaker, Margaret. The spiritual journey: One person's quest.

40. Wright, Leigh. The metaphorical universe: In search of wholeness.

41. Byrd, Richard E. A guide to personal risk taking. New York: American Management Association, 1974.
42. Dalton, Gene W. and Lawrence, Paul R. Motivation and control in organizations. Homewood, Ill: Richard D. Irwin and the Dorsey Press, 1971.
43. Dyer, William G. The sensitive manipulator. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1972.
44. Ford, Robert N. Motivation through the work itself. New York: American Management Association, 1974.
45. French, Wendell L. and Bell, Cecil H. Jr. Organization development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hail . 1971.
46. Gibb, Jack R. Trust. La Jolla, California: The Omicron Press, 1978.
47. Holt, John. Freedom and beyond. New York: Dell, 1972, pp. 286.
48. Huse, Edgar F. and Bowditch, James L. Behavior in organizations: a systems approach to managing. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1973
49. Jantsch, Erich. The self-organizing universe. New York: Pergamon, 1980.
50. Kraus, William A. Collaboration in organization. New York: Human Services Press, 1980.
51. Land, George T. Lock. Grow or die. New York: Random House, 1973.
52. Lane, Byron. Free yourself in a business of your own. Los Angeles: Guild of Tutors Press, 1979
53. Leonard, George B. Education and ecstasy. New York: Delacorte, 1968.
54. LeShan, Lawrence. Alternate realities. New York: Random House, 1971
55. —You can fight for your life. New York: M. Evans, i'977.
56. Likert, Rensis. The human organization. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
57. Marrow, Alfred J. Behind the executive mask. New York: American Management Association, 1964.
58. Maslow, Abraham H. Eupsychian management. Homewood, Ill: Dorsey Press, 1976
59. McGregor, Douglas. The professional manager. New York: McGraw Hill, 1967.
60. McWaters, Barry (Ed.) Human Perspectives: Current trends in psychology. Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1977.
61. Miller, James Grier. Living systems. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.
62. Moustakas, Clark. Creativity and conformity. New York: Van Nostrand, 19--
63. Phillips, Michael. The seven laws of money. New York: Random House, 1971 .
64. Proshansky, H.; Ittelson, W. and Rivlin, J. Environmental psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.
65. Ryan, William. Blaming the victim. New York: Pantheon, 1971.
66. Samuels, Mike and Samuels, Nancy. Seeing with the mind's eye. New York: Random House, 1976.
67. Schmuck, Richard A., et. al. Handbook of organization development in schools. Newor National Press Books, 1972.
68. Schmuck, Richard A. and Miles, Matthew B. Organization development in schools. Palo Alto, Calif.: National Press Books, 1972.
69. Schweitzer, Albert. Out of my life and thoughts, an autobiography. New York: Holt.
70. Simon, Herbert A. Administrative behavior. New York: Free Press, 1945.
71. Steele, Fred I. Physical settings and organization development. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesiey, 1976
72. Terkel, Studs. Working. New York: Random House, 1972.
73. Thayer, Frederick C. An end to hierarchy! An end to competition! New York
74. Townsend, Robert. Up the organization. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1970
75. Turner, J.; Gallimore, R. and Fox, C. Placebo: An annotated bibliography. Los Angeles: The Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California, 1964.