Changing an Organizational Culture

The traditional approaches to people with thoughts and behaviors that cause them problems in living tend also to increase the problems. Delinquency is often punished rather than rehabilitated, and mental health "controls" through chemical or physical restraints. Both procedures are easily interpreted as unhelpful, if not downright hostile. Despite the poor prognosis and stability given by the mental health professionals, all is not lost. For our cognitive structures and even the unconscious contexts, are open to conscious consideration and decision making.

Restructuring a culture for the purpose of helping children learn to deal more effectively with each other in meaningfully satisfying and gratifying relationships requires a process in which the people in charge of the facility or organization must first make clear this intent. Managing people in an organization has certain congruence with managing people with problems in living. In both cases, there is a requirement to provide a way for the personal preferences of the individuals involved to become compatible with a specific, defined set of assumptions which the manager believes will be beneficial to both the individual and the organization or society. And in both cases, the critical assumption underlying the need for change is that the learning environment [culture] has somehow created and maintained thoughts which are now considered to be incompatible with the desired outcome expectations.

The need for change requires a "theory of change", which can be described as "the manner in which a given intervention is thought to be related to intended outcomes for a particular population". Thus an expectation of change must examine closely the 'theory' which underlies the way the change from the status quo to the outcome expectation is going to occur. One sees innumerable incidents of change interventions which are based on apparently unknowable theories [and often unstated outcome expectations]. Metal detectors in schools might be a good example. One could assume that the change [outcome expectation] that is desired, is that students will no longer bring weapons to school. What is the theory behind the metal detector? Is it simply to allow the culture of carrying weapons to continue, but to 'catch' those who participate in it? There must be a reason why students bring guns to school, but it doesn't seem likely that the metal detector will affect these fundamental reasons.

Perhaps we assume that the students will be 'afraid' of getting caught, and therefore no longer bring guns. Perhaps we assume that 'fear' causes change. While this is, in a superficial way, a supportable notion, it is not fundamental change. As an alternative, we assume that once students accept that no one will be able to get a gun into school, there will be no need for them to have a gun. But if you are the smallest student in the school and have a concern about the largest student in school, you may not care whether s/he has a weapon, you might feel the need for a weapon regardless of whether anyone else has one: its the great equalizer. This seems to make the theory that "if no one has a weapon, no one needs a weapon", seem somewhat faulty as a theory of change. In fact, one can make an argument that the presence of a metal detector makes it necessary to have a weapon. After all, if there was not a need to have a weapon, there would be no need for a metal detector. The very presence of a metal detector may in this way make the school less safe. Each person recognizes the need to be 'on guard' and ready to protect him/herself because of the acknowledged expectation that there will be weapons in the school.

Cognitive behavior management operates on a theory of change that states: People are the sum total of what they think. Change occurs only when they think differently.

Based upon this theory, the idea of a metal detector entirely misses the point. There is a reason that students of a given school think that they must bring weapons to school, and that thought must change for the behavior of bringing weapons to school to change. As we have already noted, the presence of the metal detector may, in fact, reinforce the thought of needing a weapon.

But for the culture of this school to change, the thoughts of the faculty must change. Particularly those thoughts concerned with expectations. Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary [1983] defines expect as "to look for as likely to occur or appear". According to Eden [1990], it is this likelihood-of-occurrence sense that triggers self-fulfilling prophecy in the individual. Webster's also defines expect as "to look for as due, proper, or necessary; as your bill is due and immediate payment is expected". This is a normative definition of expectancy. This object of normative expectancy is what ought to occur in the future. This is not the type of expectancy that produces a self-fulfilling prophecy; it is the stuff of which role expectations and other normative concepts are made. While it is important that individuals understand how they ought to perform in the roles that they inhabit, it is more important that they feel from others that they can perform those roles.

These two meanings of expectancy - likelihood of occurrence and normative - are sufficiently different that they can be contradictory. If the manager tells a subordinate that s/he is expected [in the normative sense] to report in on time, but in his/her heart the manager actually expects [in the probability sense] the subordinate to be late, it is the latter expectation, not the normative one, that will be unwittingly communicated and initiate an self-fulfilling prophecy that may result in tardy behavior on the part of the subordinate. Thus it is expectancy in the sense of that which the expecter believes is likely to occur, rather than that which a person believes ought to occur, that leads to the behavior that fulfills the prophecy. In particular the use of 'performance expectation' refers to the level at which the manager believes the subordinate is likely to perform [Eden - 1990].

Teachers who work in schools with the metal detector are likely to expect [normatively] that the kids ought not be violent, but expect [in a probability sense] that they will be violent. The metal detector is likely to reinforce this probability expectation. Thus teachers are likely to act protectively or even aggressively towards students in order to maintain their own safety. If the faculty expects [in the probability sense] there to be violence in the school, there will be violence in the school, which of course justifies the thought that we need metal detectors.

Changing a culture is therefore, not a trivial thing. For our purposes, we will explore the potential for restructuring a culture from two perspectives: 1) the management focus on helping staff change, and then 2) the strategies [protocols, techniques and procedures] that the staff might use to reflect their new perspectives onto the users of the service. It is, to some extent, artificial to make this separation as it will often prove most beneficial to change staff thinking by providing them with tools which effectively change the clients they work with.

Osborne & Plastrik [1997] have done a wonderful job in Banishing Bureaucracy of outlining culture change which we have accessed here for our own purposes. We have additionally intertwined material from Baar's Cognitive Theory of Consciousness as well.

Osborne & Plastrik start off by telling us that changing an organization's culture is not a science. This is not because there are not structures from cognitive and behavioral science which can be utilized, but rather because culture is so pervasive and complex. Further, cultures are based on nonconscious mental contexts which are held by a group at varying levels of coherence. Within every culture their are established presuppositions which tend to become unconscious. Whatever we believe with absolute certainty we tend to take for granted. We lose sight of the fact that alternatives to our stable presuppositions can even be entertained.

Thus a culture is a many faceted perspective, perhaps best seen as a set of control mechanisms - plans, recipes, rules, instructions, which are the principal bases for the specificity of behavior and an essential condition for governing it. Since these variables have generally become repetitious and habitual, they have become nonconscious mental contexts, which, for people who are committed to it, there becomes an inability to consciously think consistently of the alternatives to their own, stable presuppositions. This is why it is so difficult to get the faculty of a school with a metal detector to even consider removing it.

It is important to note that the culture in an organization is not necessarily the organization's plans, recipes, rules and instructions, but most often includes those informal plans, recipes, rules and instructions which form in response to the organizational system. [Remember the potential of the metal detector to create a sense of fear and distrust, which is presumably just the opposite of what the organization intended.]

Historically, the traditional means for structuring experience was the myth, a term deriving from the Greek mythos, meaning 'word' - in the sense that it is a definitive statement on the subject. To give someone the 'word', even today is to 'show them the ropes' or tell them how events and incidents occur within the context of this environment. Taking a new teacher aside and helping him/her understand the threat of violence and how the other teachers protect themselves from it is how we convey the cultural myth. This process, of course, promotes the expectation of violence in the new teacher's mind and promotes a self-fulfilling method of response. The myth of violence in the school thus becomes very real.

A myth, then is an authoritative account of the facts that is not to be questioned, no matter how strange it may seem. Myths need be neither true nor false, just useful constructs for explaining the nature of an experience. Such myths were the 'common knowledge' of various cultures and helped naive people understand the nature of the world. One of the main uses of myths was to provide an explanation of how real world events work. People using myths made no pretensions to truth, rather they were stating "this is the way we do things around here". It is somehow comforting at times of crisis to have a belief system that provides some explanation for what would otherwise seem a capricious event. In this same sense, "the way we do things around here", the mythos culture if you will, may be quite different from the logos culture [logical or formal culture] of the organization.

A paradigm is a set of assumptions about the nature of reality. Thomas Kuhn introduced the notion in 1962, with the publication of his book the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The scientific paradigms he described were highly rational: they had explicit rules, recorded in scientific literature. Cultural paradigms are different: they are often unwritten, unspoken, even unconscious. A cultural paradigm is like an identity: it is so much a part of each of us that we are not even aware of it. [Another analogy which might make sense is that the cultural paradigm is like gravity - we rarely notice it in our everyday functioning, but it has a powerful influence.] If someone asked us to write down the basic assumptions of our cultural paradigms, few of us could do it. And yet we could not operate without them. Kuhn argued that "something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see."

Thus the individual cognitive mental contexts described by Baar might be considered the parcels or quanta which support the cultural paradigm and the quanta, in various combinations, predispose us to acting in certain ways. It is not too difficult to be reminded of incidents where an individual [student] behaved dramatically different in a different context or culture.

In conceptual contexts, we can at times make a quanta consciously accessible, and change it. The new conceptual context then begins to shape the interpretation of observations. Since new paradigms, which are made up of many quanta are born from old ones, they ordinarily incorporate much of the vocabulary and apparatus, both conceptual and manipulative, that the traditional paradigm had previously employed. But they seldom employ these borrowed elements in quite the traditional way. Within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts and experiments fall into new relationships with the other.

Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial. Both parties are looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. Kuhn calls this phenomenon "the incommensurability of competing paradigms". Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and natural experience.

Paradigms are conceptual contexts. If one tried to make a paradigm conscious, one could only make one aspect of it conscious at any one time because of the limited capacity of consciousness. But typically paradigm-differences between two groups of scientists involves not just one, but many different aspects of the mental framework simultaneously.

For persons within a culture change understanding either occurs as an epiphany; a spiritual experience, or becomes quite difficult to understand at all, causing anxiety and uncertainty. Further increase of exposure results in still more hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, many begin to produce some of the correct identifications without hesitation. This is because new quanta have now become, through repetition and habituation, no longer novel, but a nonconscious context. A few people, however, will never be able to make the requisite adjustments of their contexts and the people who then fail often experience acute personal distress.

According to Osborne and Plastrik, the first thing you have to do is get people to let go of their old assumptions. In science, the key is what Kuhn calls 'anomalies' - problems the old paradigm cannot solve, realities it cannot explain, facts it cannot admit to be true. As these anomalies pile up, people begin to lose faith in the old paradigm. Thus the manager needs to develop a change strategy which will:

Counterintuitively, and contrary to our beloved 'pilot project' approach, implementation of the whole plan must occur at once. People begin to let go of their old paradigms when they run into experiences, facts, and feelings that cannot be explained by the old set of assumptions. These anomalies provoke 'dissonance' - conflicts between what one has experienced and what one knows to be possible. Often people cope by refusing to see the anomalies. When anomalies appear, they immediately define them as something else. If they are able to retreat to another part of the organization and find support for their resistance, it is unlikely that the culture will ever change in the direction that management has chosen. [Though it will change in response to the new order.]

To break through this paradigm blindness, you must not only introduce anomalies into the culture, you must actively help people perceive them for what they are. As they begin to experience the resulting dissonance, they will be uncomfortable. Asking people to give up their most basic assumptions about life is like asking them to play a new game without knowing the rules - a game that will determine whether they have a job, how much they earn, and what their colleagues think of them.

Hence you must give them a new set of rules. You must provide a new way of understanding the anomalies - a way they can embrace. They will not be able to tolerate the ambiguity for very long. They will either make the leap or retreat into their old paradigm.

Osborne and Plastrik liken it to the trapeze artist, there must be no ambiguity about there being a specific time and place to land when s/he lets go of the bar. Every paradigm shift is ultimately a leap of faith and for those who have faith only in the old culture, there is likely to be a great deal of anxiety about who to trust and where they will land. To build people's faith in a new culture, you must first earn their trust. None of us put our faith in people we don't trust. You must then prove to them that others who have made the leap before them have flourished, and to assure them that they too will flourish in the new culture. A paradigm shift begins with an ending. It begins when people let go of their former worldview - a frightening process that creates much of the resistance to change.

You must accept the fact that it will take time before people fully internalize the new paradigm. It's the limbo between the old sense of identify and the new. It is a time when the old way is gone and the new doesn't feel comfortable yet. People make the new beginning only if they have first made an ending and spent some time in the neutral zone. And yet, you must also make it untenable to continue holding onto the old bar. The trapeze artist of our analogy is likely to take a greater risk to leap to the new bar, if s/he is aware that the old bar is disappearing. But being aware that the old culture [bar] is gone and not being able to see the new culture [bar] is "being between a rock and a hard place". It is a dilemma without any apparent answer. Managers who seek to change cultures want the new place to be very apparent. And so Osborne and Plastrik suggest that you give them touchstones - guidelines and reference points they can hold onto as anchors as they struggle.

What this means is that in a transformation of culture, the management must be prepared to articulate the new culture completely and to change the world abruptly. This is not a transition. A transition would change pieces and not the whole. An abrupt change requires that there be plans, recipes, rules, instructions, which are the principal bases for the specificity of behavior and an essential condition for governing it. Change is a time of uncertainty. Uncertainty causes anxiety. Managers limit uncertainty not by "easing into a new program", but by being explicit about expectations. Like them or not, knowing the new expectations and how they will be measured relieves uncertainty, and for most, diminishes anxiety.

Osborne and Plastrik have more to say on cultural change which should be explored not only by public, but private managers as well. Additionally, the understanding of the workings of thought on emotion and behavior is important knowledge for all managers.

The actions described so far, may be sufficient for normal business and industry, but the human services manager [health, education and welfare] must go even further. The culture they intend to change requires not only that the organizational staff change their paradigm perspectives, but that the people they serve do so as well. The process must be duplicated [a metachange, if you will].

Individuals have problems in living according to our theory, only because of the way they perceive the world and the thoughts & feelings about these experiences. People are the sum total of their thoughts. One cannot act different than the way they think [unless, of course they are 'acting'!] Therefore, change can only occur when they think differently. Interventions that help people think about how they think have the most impact on change.

We might first note that there are two mental frameworks to consider. First, there is the mental construct which creates and contains a 'theory of meaning' for each individual. This 'theory' provides a framework for each individual to interpret the objects and events of the world. The major mental contexts of each individual, which characterize self, others, future prospects, and attributions [explanations] of success and failure, populate this structure. These contexts develop over long periods of time with the most naive theory construction occurring around four years of age. Up to that point the process is bottom-up data driven: each new experience providing more information about the world. After four, the experience becomes more top-down and theory driven. Thus new experiences get measured by what I believe about myself and others, for example, and this gives meaning to the experience. Personal theories get more and more entrenched over time, unless dramatic new information causes reassessment.

The other framework is the 'leakage' of theory of meaning contexts that occur through internal dialogue and resultant behavior. As we experience events we comment on them using our theory of meaning. Thus, we might see a couple kissing and be appalled at the behavior because, according to our theory of meaning, kissing implies sex and sex is 'bad'. The comment either to ourself or to others might be "look at that tramp", or something similar. The behavior response may range from walking away to some form of 'attack', based upon the interpretive judgment and the behavior repertoire.

It is this 'leakage' which provides the potential for staff to infer the theory of meaning of the individual client and provides an aspect for work in helping that person change. As we are able to help the person identify 'cognitive errors' in the leakage, and to weigh the results of these thoughts, we open the potential for cognitive restructuring and change.

Thus we start our exploration of the language and concepts of change according to our theory of change by becoming acutely aware of the 'leakage' or cues coming from our clients; identifying the mental representations of self, others and future prospects; the explanations they give for why they succeed and/or fail; and what are the automatic thoughts that occur to them as internal dialogue when objects or events are perceived by them, and whether these automatic [reflex] thoughts create positive or negative feelings which influence the choice of behaviors.

If we want to change the thoughts of a student that s/he must bring a weapon to school, it will require that we ascertain what s/he thinks regarding the subject. Both direct questioning and 'leakage' can provide us with information about these thoughts and it is from this information that strategies [protocols, techniques and procedures] can be developed to change the thoughts that lead to problems in living. However, while many of these methods are useful in healing or changing difficulties after they have begun, it is also possible to utilize the same principles to help children get a good start in learning how to live. This is through the creation of a culture which promotes positive thoughts.

Starting this cultural change process usually requires "changing the mind" of staff. This might hinge on helping the helping staff access their own wisdom regarding change. Managers can do this by helping the staff individually and collectively metaperceptively examine their own experiences. Metaperception is the ability of human beings to remember the past and imagine the future. We can perceive an event in the present; remember the event as we think it happened; imagine the event as one that will occur in the future; and change all of the variables of time, space, our relationship to it [participant, other participant, observer, observer of the observer, etc.]. Thus, we can experience objects and events in multiple [meta] ways.

Depending on how far you have progressed with the managerial phase, you may ask each staff person to start by thinking about and articulating in one sentence a personal 'theory of change'. [If you have already inculcated a theory, the staff person is likely to 'parrot' that theory, rather than provide one which they believe. On the other hand, if you are using this to develop some accord from a managerial perspective, you may first, bring into consciousness, the individual staff person's theory, and then, utilizing comparative analysis, challenge or support that theory. If you do not have consensus, the following exercise may help to make the point.

> This exercise is helpful in both dissociating ourselves from objects and events with substantive emotional value [positive or negative] and for the creative process of looking at something from different points of view. We can help staff understand this concept and the language that goes with it while, at the same time, help them experience it in a new way through many exercises. The following exercise taken from The Heart of the Mind by Connirae and Steven Andreas [1989] might be a good way to start.

Perhaps the child has been doing something that the staff person has not known how to handle, or something that "drives them up a wall". S/he might choose something the child does or something s/he believes the child is feeling, but the most value will come from considering something that occurred recently.

Running a movie is usually a self-explanatory concept. Have the staff person re-experience the episode as though they were watching it on a movie screen. Imagine going through the episode with the child again. Start from the beginning, looking out through staff eyes, and noticing what actually happened. Notice what information is available to you, how you feel, and what you see and hear.

This step is moving you to what is known as the second position. You are no longer yourself, but you are the other person in the event. This is a degree of separation or dissociation from the person that you were in the situation and the emotional reactions that you had in the situation.

Before each staff person starts the movie this time, s/he should think for a moment about the child. Think about the child's posture, breathing, movement, etc. Recall the sound of the child's voice. Once s/he has imagined the child clearly, she should step into the child! Then s/he should take a moment to become this child. Then, starting at the beginning, run the movie of the situation from the child's position. You are now moving as the child, sounding like the child and seeing out the child's eyes. Experience the feelings of the child in the situation. See what you can learn.

Each staff person should take as much time as s/he needs to go through this situation as the child, and notice what new information is available. Do you become aware of feelings the child may be having that you were not aware of when it was really happening? What sense do you get of the child in the situation and the way s/he handled it?

What do you notice about your own behavior as you watch and listen from this vantage point? If you notice that part of your behavior seems very inappropriate from this vantage point, you can be pleased that you have acquired new and useful information. If you learn something about what the child may be feeling, you can be similarly pleased.

You have just experienced [metaperceived] a problem situation from three very different and very important positions. What information do you have now that you didn't have before? What ideas does this give you about what you might do with the child given this information?

Be tentative about what you have learned. No one ever completely knows what another person is thinking or feeling, so when we do this we are 'making it up', and need to check out this information carefully. The process can help us tremendously in gaining better intuitions about what others are thinking, but they are still the experts about themselves!

For purposes of culture restructuring, however, the real purpose of this exercise is to help the individual staff person identify anomalies in preparation for change. Hopefully, it is not too confusing to state that you will need to change the way your staff think so that they can help change the way the clients think; and both processes follow the same principles.

Such memes can be perceived as the carriers of culture and it is important for us to identify memes in order to see how all of us are influenced by this process. We might explore,for example, a meme of some importance to human services in general and mental health services in particular: - 'some people will'. As this meme propagates itself from brain to brain through imitation, from supervisor to subordinate, worker to client, client to family, it provides much of the destructive thinking which generates the presumed 'coherence' upon which the traditional coercive system is predicated.

Dawkins has suggested that there need not be an exact copy in each person's brain. Memes, like genes, he says, are susceptible to variation or distortion - the analogue to mutations. Various mutations then must compete with each other as well as with other memes for attention. Part of the element of a successfully competing meme must be that it has coherence [truth] to the brain receiving it. If through rigorous analysis, the meme is proven to be false [incoherent] it will not be propagated. Thus the most powerful memes are simple to understand and relatively difficult to refute.

'Some people will' has such a construct. It is, in fact, irrefutable. While, as with all generalizations, it is wrong; it cannot be so demonstrated. The context of its truth hinges upon two variables. First, is the indefinite quality of some . Some can be as small as one. Any more merely emphasizes the correctness of the implication.

But even one is a definite number and the successful continuation of the meme seems to rely more significantly on the other variable: the extensive diversity of human nature. As can be shown by the traditional bell curve, while most of us are within the body of the bell, 'some people will' be at either extreme end. Thus, given the compilation of indefiniteness of number and the inevitability of the bell curve; the truth of the statement becomes obvious.

One additional variable also seems to come into play in the propagation of this meme and that is the 'self fulfilling prophecy' quality of it. Once stated, it seems almost inevitable that someone, somewhere at some time in the future must carry it out. What wo/man can conceive, s/he can achieve.

This would, of course, create no difficulty to the meme pool of mankind, if the tag end of the meme some people will was a positive proposition. In fact, such positive proposition memes, as we will see later, are vital to the development of a culture of positive expectation. Some people will care about their neighbors; be good role models for young people; be honest in their dealings; etc. would be very nice memes indeed. Unfortunately, this meme seems to have become malignant. It connects mostly with negative, even catastrophic propositions.

In the past, we are told, society had a code of honor. A man's word was his bond. We had handshakes, not contracts. But then someone began to think 'some people will' lie, cheat and steal. And as this meme passed from brain to brain, it of course, turned out to be true and on those occasions folks rued the handshake and wished they had a contract.

The irrefutability of the meme, along with some horror stories, led to more and more people believing it and so it began to mutate into 'most people will' lie, cheat and steal. This led, of course, to the self-fulfilling aspects of this meme. Since marginally honest people began to believe that since 'most people will' lie, cheat and steal, they should do unto others before they did unto them. Thus, we have gradually developed a society which is more and more distrustful and dishonest with bureaucratic regulations which make it increasing difficult for an honest person to function.

The cancerous nature of the meme has wormed its way into every aspect of our lives. Most problematic to the human service community is how it has impacted upon the field of mental health. 'Some people will' be violent, commit suicide; commit murder; need hospitalization; need long term restriction.

These statements are irrefutable and self-fulfilling. They drive the mental health system to create the hospitals [jails] first and then fill them. Any number of beds built will be filled, since 'patients' increase sufficiently to fill the beds available to them. This self-fulfilling axiom is substantively enhanced by the need for full occupancy to maximize profit or to increase status by producing more service than other providers.

The essential optimism required of human services becomes difficult to maintain in light of the horror stories that prove that 'some people will'. We create a system for 'some people' and then use it to serve everyone. The very coerciveness required to control some people, makes them resistive, frustrated and angry, proving the point.

Our prior example of the school probably has mutated a similar meme such as 'some kids will be violent' which conveys "I don't know what is wrong with kids today, 'most kids' are so violent!" The fact that fewer children were killed in school the year of Columbine, than were killed by inflating air bags, is lost in the equation. If we are to change the culture of such a school, we will need to find some way to mute or mutate this and other such memes. It would not hurt at all for management to collect such memes and develop specific inoculations for them through developing positive mutations of the most popular memes.

Then the mutations can be 'seeded' into the environment. The method is fundamentally based on the premise that describing a particular state to a person evokes that state (and, additionally, that once evoked, it can be anchored, linked, directed, intensified, combined with embedded commands, etc).

What is referred to above as 'describing' is known in the scientific literature as 'priming' or 'seeding'. Priming refers to 'the activation or change in the accessibility of a concept by the earlier presentation of the same or a closely related concept' (Sherman, 1988, p. 65). Kihlstrom (1987) and relates it to preconscious processing: "..Preconscious processing can influence the ease with which certain ideas are brought to mind, and the manner in which objects and events are perceived and interpreted. Finally, in order for preconscious processing to affect action it is necessary that relevant goal structures be activated in procedural memory."

We would suggest that seeding an environment with memes, icons and rituals which are habitually experienced over and over helps to make the conscious process of such experiences nonconscious. Repeating a mantra which includes an internal attribution [explanation] such as "This school has the most responsible students" over and over has an impact of [describing a particular state to a person evokes that state] making students responsible. Using a ritual such as "Stop & Think" not only provides a mantra/meme, but has a conscious process of behavioral steps, which causes both the adult and the child to act out the experience according to a specific set of rules. The meme made up of the words, "Stop & Think", can be used on various icons as conscious/nonconscious reminders of the expected ritual. Other rituals, based on metaperception can be utilized [such as ritualizing the staff exercise], so that a "beginner's mind" can be attained each day by ritually 'changing history' first thing in the morning.

'Cognitive qualifiers' are another type of meme, which can be 'scripted' for teachers to have maximum 'seeding' benefit. Happily, Steve Andreas, has brought to our attention that, John McWhirter has described a fascinating and subtle linguistic example of how the mind can be preset to respond in a particular way that, sadly, others have not previously noticed.

A 'cognitive qualifier' is a meme made up of a 'commentary' adverb appearing at the beginning of a sentence or phrase that refers to an emotional or cognitive state, such as 'happily' or 'sadly' in the previous sentence. A cognitive qualifier [describing a particular state to a person evokes that state] prepares the mind to respond in a specified way to whatever words follow.

To experience this effect, think of an ordinary descriptive sentence like, "The green tree is standing in the sunlight", or "I am sitting at the desk", and imagine saying this sentence to yourself... Now imagine saying the exact same sentence, but preceded by the word 'sadly', and notice how this changes your experience... Then say the same sentence, but preceded by the word 'happily', and again pay attention to your experience...

Cognitive qualifiers direct your mind to think of aspects of an experience that are specified by the kind of qualifier used. Imagine what your life would be like if you began every sentence, and every thought, with the word 'sadly' or 'regrettably'. That is a very effective way to be depressed, and some people actually do this! In contrast, imagine what your life would be like if every sentence and thought were preceded by the word 'happily' or 'fortunately'. This would be a much better choice, and again, some people actually do this!.

By scripting teachers to begin sentences with positive 'cognitive qualifiers' on a regular basis, the school could begin to change the subtle clues about what this culture is about. Happily, that could have a beneficial effect. Understandably, teachers might feel incongruent about using the qualifier 'happily' for some unpleasant events, but luckily there is an alternative resource. Both 'sadly' and 'happily' refer to emotional states, and most emotions are evaluative, dealing with pleasant or unpleasant, positive or negative. These evaluative qualifiers will sometimes seem inappropriate for the content of a particular thought or sentence.

Interestingly, there is a set of cognitive/emotional states that is quite different, and that do not have negative or unpleasant aspects. Curiously, they all center around a state of interest, curiosity, attention, or understanding: 'interestingly', 'curiously', 'surprisingly', 'understandably', etc. Something unpleasant can be just as interesting as something pleasant - the state of interest or fascination itself is always positive and enjoyable. You probably never heard anyone complain about being curious: "Oh! I had this awful curiosity last night - it was terrible!"

Since these cognitive qualifiers miraculously never have negative states associated with them, they are truly universal resources, which can be used with any experience. And since a state of curiosity or interest is an excellent resource state for learning and change, this kind of cognitive qualifier is a wonderful state to use in beginning to understand and process a difficulty. For example, think of some experience in your life that you might describe as a problem or difficulty, and make up a simple sentence that describes it, such as, "I hate it when people don't follow through on their promises". Say this sentence to yourself, and notice how you represent this internally... Now say the same sentence to yourself, but preceded by the word 'interestingly', or 'curiously', or "understandably," and pay attention to how this word changes your experience. Most people experience subtle but profound changes as attention is drawn away from how unpleasant the problem event is and toward interest and curiosity about how it happens, or how it can be understood - a state of readiness and eagerness for learning. Imagine what your life would be like if every sentence and thought you had began with 'Interestingly' or 'Understandably'.

This can be very useful when used as a 'backtrack' with a student. When a student describes a problem, you can feed back their statement, beginning with 'understandably', or some other qualifier that has to do with curiosity and learning, and watch for the nonverbal shifts that indicate that they are thinking about it in a more relaxed and useful way.

John McWhirter has also pointed out that a very important aspect of these cognitive qualifiers is that they create a shared and universal world, a frame that embraces both the speaker and the listener. It is quite different to say I find that interesting, or "Do you find that interesting?" in which there is an apparent separation or difference between us. When I say 'Interestingly', this sets up a frame that simply exists and is taken for granted, and that we both experience together, without the separation between self and other that many people often feel. This transcends rapport, because rapport presupposes the difference that the rapport bridges.

Surprisingly, with a powerful state of interest and curiosity, many 'problems' simply vanish as my attention turns from how unpleasant they are to simply learning how they exist and function, and what I can do to change them. Even when they don't vanish, it is a much more useful place to begin to work toward understanding and a solution.

Interestingly, the idea that all of life is a school in which we have lessons to learn is a very old idea, and one that is particularly central in certain spiritual traditions, Buddhism in particular. Whether this is true or not, it is a very powerful reorientation for your life as a whole, one that makes life much easier and more enjoyable, both for yourself and for others.

Attributions are concerned with the way people try to "make sense of the world" by providing explanations for why events happen by setting them into a causal framework. When individuals engage in an activity, they may attribute their outcomes to the operation of one or more causal factors - the tendency to ascribe responsibility to personal forces [e.g., ability and effort], or to impersonal forces over which the individual has little control [e.g., situation and bad luck]. The nature of the causal attribution is the internal-external control.

Possibly the most important attributions are those that explain why we have succeeded or failed in a given situation. Generally, it is the person who takes internal responsibility for success/failure who is most competent in living. Certainly, we can 'seed' the environment with internal attributions which prime the individual to accept responsibility and to achieve through self-effort.

Attribution training happens through interpersonal communication either formally or informally. While it would be nice to have a culture in which everyone understood and used internal attributions at the appropriate times, this is generally not the case. In fact, research indicates just the opposite. Partially this is because of the fundamental cognitive attribution error in which there is a tendency for the actor [or person behaving] to attribute the cause of their success/failure to situational or external factors, whereas the observers of the behavior, tend to attribute the same action to disposition or internal factors. Thus adults in the environment are more likely to 'blame' the child for outcomes, particularly negative outcomes, over which the child has no control, while the child is much more likely to place the 'blame' on external forces [including perhaps the adults]. Does this sound like 'oppositional' behavior, in which the child is disputing authority, to you?

In order to ensure that positive internal attributions occur on a regular basis from the significant adults in the culture, it is important to install a procedure which 'seeds' the culture with positive internal attributions. One such method, to enhance the performance of an individual child, is to script the environment. Scripting is simply the writing out of specific words to be used in specific situations as appropriate.

For example, management can explore and identify specific areas of attribution difficulty of an individual child through a Functional Cognitive Behavior Assessment process in which all significant people in the child's life as well as the child are interviewed [preferably together] in regard to their observations as to the events & experiences, and the thoughts [leakage] stated at a time regarding judgement of success and/or failure and attributions of that outcome, for example, after the giving of a test.

It is important to gather information not only on the child's attributions, but on the attributions of the others who relate to the child as well. This is because the adults, through the fundamental cognitive attribution error, may be promoting negative attributions on a regular basis in these difficult areas. Management can ensure that the appropriate scripts are used by these people at these times.

While some students will have negative attribution traits [external locus of control, stability and uncontrollability] which are pervasive, most will have more or less specific areas of special concern either because it bothers them more than other areas or because it is more debilitating to their functioning. The area can be academic [math or reading], social ["people don't like me"] or any of an infinite variety of areas.

When the data collection is done, whether collected for an individual or for the class as a whole, management can develop scripts for the significant adults to use with the child(ren) during identified problem events. Based on the information which has been gathered, the development and implementation of scripts, enable the staff to support the positive internal attributions for the child. Additionally, their use may also diminish and perhaps replace the negative attributions of these teachers, and provides a 'seed' of different thinking and communicating within the culture, which can have a significant impact upon the child.

Changing our own communication is difficult. More than 95% of what we do is done nonconsciously, and it cannot be otherwise. Thus, it will be important that there be a schedule for use of the scripts which does not limit their use at other times, but ensures that they are said at the appropriate times. This schedule is unlikely to be temporal, and more likely to be situational. Thus, it is not in the schedule to state the script at a certain time during the day, but rather that it must be used every time a specific situation comes up [e.g., before a math test].

The scripts will obviously need to be revised occasionally, simply so that they maintain a freshness to the child and the significant adults. On the other hand, through continued inquiry, evidence of more successful scripts can be accumulated and strengthened and weaker scripts abandoned.

There is a study about using internal attributions in relation to math and comparing this technique of antecedent attributions with the technique of persuasion and the technique of reinforcement. The question is how to explain the math performance. The following scripts were used with individual kids. The teacher would write or say:

The technique of reinforcement should be familiar to all of us as it is generally seen as the 'state of the art' in school technology for behavior intervention. Consequences can influence whether or not a behavior will continue. If a behavior is followed by a consequence that is pleasant, the behavior will most likely happen more often. Another word for a consequence is reinforcer. Reinforcers can be positive or negative - which will determine the likelihood of increasing or decreasing the behavior. A positive reinforcer is any pleasant object or activity that is given to a person following a behavior which increases that behavior. The script offers positive social reinforcers to the child.

Persuasion is the simple procedure of telling a person that s/he should or ought to be able to do something and expecting that they will acknowledge the telling. The persuasion strategy seems generally to be the strategy that parents and teachers use as a 'normal or default standard'. It is the strategy of choice in our personal lives. However, it is the least effective of the three and, therefore, should not be considered a professional strategy.

The outcome of this study helps to delineate the anomalies of our system. The baseline for everyone was 15. Over two tests, the kids with persuasion scripts averaged 15.5 & 15. The reinforcement kids averaged 16 & 16, while the antecedent attribution kids averaged 17.5 & 17.8. The attribution kids averaged one to two points more and held this improvement over the next two weeks. "This is the kind of person I am, one who can do math."

This comparison to persuasion and/or behavioral reinforcement is significant. The issue of self appraisal is also of concern and the use of reinforcement is a major focus of many 'feeling good' programs. The issue of self esteem is a powerful one in our society, and we often use positive reinforcement, even when it is not merited, to support the child. The quotes below, selected from Martin Seligman's book The Optimistic Child, suggest that perhaps our present method of operation is a dangerous one.

As teachers and parents reinforce non-existent achievement, they undermine self esteem, which is an effect of doing good, not a cause of doing good. When parents and teachers praise children in pre-planned ways which do not take into account the child's effort or the outcome of the child's effort, this may, in fact, be damaging to the child. This is not to imply that reinforcement of doing good is not appropriate.

The reinforcement strategy, when used properly has positive impact and it should be noted that we are not suggesting that it be abandoned. However, we should be concerned that we only use reinforcement when it is earned and we should increase the use of antecedent attributions.

This leads to the whole question of rewards and punishment, which Marvin Marshall has considered in depth. Since both rewards and punishment are external reinforcements, they are not as helpful as internal attributions on two counts: 1) they are external and 2) they are reinforcements, not antecedent attributions. They do not cue a child how to act, but merely attempt to respond to how the child acted.

My eleven-year-old daughter had done something terrific and I launched into my usual, "Oh, honey, mommy's so proud of you. . . ." Well, she stopped me mid-gush, put her hand on her hips and implored, "Mom, please stop! Whenever you do that, you make me feel like you're surprised that I can do things like I'm not capable!"

The mother was using praise in an attempt to reward her daughter. Although the mother's intentions were honorable, they were counterproductive. In large part, it is apparent that the mother used such positive reinforcement ad nauseam. The message was not the positive one intended, but rather the falseness or exaggeration of the reinforcement which actually sent a different message - "Boy! Am I surprised."

The mother has since started to acknowledge her daughter's actions without reference to her own motherly pride. Acknowledgments refrain from implying the action was taken to please someone else. Acknowledgments [I saw that], recognition [you did well], and validation [that was good] are more universal and satisfying rewards.

Incentives can also serve as rewards. Grades are incentives for many students. However, schools have great numbers of students who are not motivated by such incentives. The point is important: Rewards can serve as effective incentives only if the person is interested in that reward. Giving incentive rewards for failure to achieve is possibly the worst of all worlds: e.g., getting good grades without doing the work.

Although rewards such as acknowledgments and incentives can have salutary effects, rewards for expected standards of behavior are often counterproductive. Schools and parents often give young people the message that society will somehow immediately reward them if they act appropriately.

On the other hand, when students are not afraid, punishment loses its efficacy. Yet, we often resort to punishment as a strategy for motivation. The literature on punishment suggests that it not only does not work, but that it leads to increasing violence. Kauffman (1993) for example states that "The punishment of children by adults may result in aggression when it causes pain, when there are no positive alternatives to the punished behavior, when punishment is delayed or inconsistent, or when punishment provides a model of aggressive behavior." For example, students who are assigned detention and who fail to show up are punished with more detention. But in the hundreds of seminars conducted around the country, teachers who use detention rarely suggest that it is effective in changing behavior.

A group of researchers observed young kids [3 to 5] at play. They noticed that most of the kids loved playing with the magic marker type crayons and would use them with great concentration and apparent pleasure. According to attribution theory, we would claim that these kids used the crayons for internal reasons. There was no external force causing this behavior.

Then the researchers promised, then gave, one randomly group of children 'Good Player Awards' as a reward for their playing efforts with the crayons. For one week these children knew they would get a 'prize' at the end of the week for their drawing behavior. For the remainder of the children, no such promises were made.

The results were dramatic. The children given the rewards reduced how often they played with the crayons and reduced how much time they spent with the crayons because the process changed an internal attribution to an external one. The control group maintained their normal frequency and duration of use since their intrinsic motivation to use the crayons was not affected.

The key issue around using rewards is to focus on how they are used. If the reward is earned, it is appropriate and has some impact upon motivating the child. However, if it is used when there is no performance OR for behavior that is already taking place, it can have a negative impact.

* when the behaviors are already being performed because of intrinsic satisfactions, the reward may move the motivation for performance from internal satisfaction to the desire for the external reward and thereby eliminate the behavior when no reward is available.

The idea that rewards and punishments are effective means of changing the culture is probably unfounded. However, the use of 'seeding' the environment with positive memes, mantras, scripting, rituals, icons, cognitive qualifiers and positive internal attributions can have a major impact.

These 'tools' for 'seeding' can be developed and implemented without changing the 'mind' of the educational or clinical staff [although they may influence the staff to change their minds]. Thus, management can take the initiative of supplying these tools and implementing these strategies even before the management culture is fully prepared. While they use the same methods as cognitive restructuring, which is the remedial process, they do not, in fact require extensive training and belief. In fact, using these strategies can help to create the anomalies which Osborne & Plastrick indicate are so necessary for change. In addition, they provide a framework for the future to which staff can relate.