By: Gary J. Salton, Ph.D.
Chief: Research & Development
Professional Communications, Inc.
Chief: Research & Development
Professional Communications, Inc.
INTRODUCTION:
The Reactive Stimulator (RS) style has permeated all aspects of my life—from the most trivial to the most consequential. To map all of the effects of the style over my 77 year life span would fill bookshelves. What can be done here is to sketch how my dominant Reactive Stimulator decision strategy affected the course of my career path. The trajectory of that path begins in early childhood.
My earliest memory was as a 5 year old running along the top of a brick pier at Lake Tippecanoe. My mother casually commented to my father that I was “a real risk taker!” What effect did that remark have on my life? I do not know. But just the fact that I remember the episode after 70 years suggests that it had some effect.
Fulfilling my mother’s prophecy was easy. All you had to do to create risk was to act before fully thinking through an issue. This reduces the cost of decision making. No thinking means that less effort needed and things can get done faster.
This strategy works best when focused on near-term outcomes. The dangers lurking in a longer term horizon were simply risks that could be handled as they became visible. Since issues were not thought through, there was no way to figure out how close I was to perfection. Thus adequacy rather than optimality became my standard of acceptance.
The pattern of behavior described above is what I would later come to define as a Reactive Stimulator or RS style (i.e., a style is a characteristic manner of doing something). This is one of four basic styles that people typically use to navigate life. Did my mother’s off-hand comment set the course of my life down this least traveled road? It is possible but not likely. There is much evidence that a large part of our life orientation is set at birth or soon thereafter. But whatever was the ultimate “cause” of adoption the RS strategy has proven to be durable enough for me to continue to use it over a very long lifetime.
The RS strategy had a lot to offer. It was cheap, fast, exciting and can produce an impressive volume of outcomes. With adequacy as the standard the quality of those outcomes was uneven. In most cases good enough is good enough and optimal solutions are not a required condition. While it is low cost, the RS strategy comes with serious downside exposures. These risks can disrupt a life path before that path is even launched.
In my case that serious exposure occurred in my early education. During this time in history (the 1940’s) classroom order was a primary goal of elementary education (at least at the school I attended). My RS orientation caused me to center my attention on “doing” thing (versus thinking about them). A short-range horizon (measured in minutes at this age) blinded me to potential future consequences. Using adequacy as my standard meant that things were never quite right in the teacher’s eyes. This was not a formula for educational success.
These and other RS generated tendencies caused me to disregard rules. I did not intentionally go about trying to disobey rules. I just did not notice the rules even existed. My teachers interpreted my behavior as willful disobedience and applied their favored method of restoring order—corporeal punishment. A ruler forcefully applied to the palm of the hand was intended to impart a new pattern of behavior. It did not work. My short-term orientation came into play. I simply forgot to remember about the punishment.
The end result was that my behavior persisted unchanged. The result was that I flunked 4th grade (or maybe 5th, I’m not really sure which). I do not know if I flunked due to a shortfall in my cumulative learning or as a disciplinary strategy. Whatever was the motive another year in 4th grade did not result in any visible behavioral maturation. I suspect that social promotion powered my progress through the remainder of my primary grades—I was just getting too old to keep around.
My behavior in high school followed the same trajectory as my primary school years—just at a much more accelerated rate. I dropped out of high school after the first semester of my freshman year. I had flunked almost all classes during that first semester (I got a “D” in shop) and I saw little point in hanging around for more of the same. Fortunately life in the 1950’s had advantages for high school dropouts that are not available today.
Those advantages centered on the need for a lot of unskilled labor. Primary among them for a high school dropout was the military. The armed forces still needed to enlist people to serve as cannon fodder (soldiers considered as expendable war material). If you were warm and breathing, you had a potential home in the military. I qualified.
Overall, my years in the military were colored more by alcohol and youthful indiscretions than by the strategic styles that guided behavioral choices. Those indiscretions resulted in rank reduction. I left the service honorably but at the same rank as when I joined. However, something had happened that I did not notice at the time.
That unnoticed life-changing event was basic training. For some unknown reason no one in my early years—parents or teachers—were able to show me the value that discipline can have on performance. Drill Sergeants did not have that problem. They have ways of getting and keeping your attention whether you want it or not. They were able to introduce and instill the practice of discipline—obedience to rules and codes of behavior.
For military purposes that obedience was focused on the chain of command. If a superior told you to leave the foxhole, you did it without thought or question. The training focused on physical activities. The value of discipline on the physical outcome was obvious. However, I generalized that learning and applied it to life in general. I interpreted discipline as focused energy. I then figured that if I applied enough focused energy to a subject—any subject—I could do almost anything. This belief was going to be a key to my future life course.
THE DEVELOPMENTAL YEARS
Luck played a significant role in my RS oriented life. The short-range opportunistic orientation created a lot of negative exposures such as those of my early educational experience. But it also presented me with unplanned opportunities. One of these opportunities arose when a friend asked me to accompany him. He was planning to sign up for classes at a local junior college. Like me, neither his family nor friends had any experience with higher education. I presume that he wanted my company to provide him some reassurance in the face of the unfamiliar.
I did accompany him and milled around the college office waiting for my friend to complete his registration. From casual discussions with the staff I found that the newly opened junior college (they are now referred to as Community Colleges) had just opened its doors. I also discovered that they were desperate for students to fill the seats. Their standard of acceptance at the time was the same as it had been for the military. You had to be warm and breathing. I again qualified.
Without a lot of forethought and with no particular plan in mind I signed up for a class in general speech. The $45.00 I paid for the course would be about $385 in 2019 dollars. This was a significant commitment for me at the time and the commitment had a positive effect. I now had to get “value” from my investment. The only way to get value was to attend class and do the work.
This is where the learning from my basic training in the military kicked in. I faithfully attended the speech classes and dutifully completed assignments. The demands of a general speech class do not sound like much. But for a person who had met nothing but failure in academic pursuits it was material. The ability to do the course work demonstrated to me that I was intellectually no different from my classmates. I could compete with “smart, college educated” people.
The “C” grade that I earned in that first college level class confirmed that I was capable of heretofore impossible things. This was the highest grade I had earned up to that time. It opened the doors of possibility in my mind. A two-year Associate of Arts degree became a realistic prospect. That possibility provided the motive for signing up for two 101 level classes for the next trimester. The dollar commitments were getting bigger.
I chose economics and sociology. These choices again show the influence of my RS style. Keep in mind what I knew at the time. I knew that economics had to do with the study of money. I did not even consider that the subject would demand at least a high school math background that I did not have. But using my basic training focus and energy I believed that the relevant math could be searched out and acquired. It was and it could.
I knew that sociology had something to do with the study of societies. I came to find out that it was not mathematically demanding but it involved an awful lot of reading. I knew how to read but did not have a lot of practice actually doing it. Comprehension demanded much re-reading and a slow pace. Again basic training discipline came into play. I simply applied myself without regard of whether that reading took one hour or ten.
In both subjects I simply “hit the books” with everything I had. I read and reread assigned readings until I felt I understood them completely. I ran and reran calculations in economics until I was sure that the results were correct. It was a clumsy, inefficient and a personally costly method. But it worked. Grades of “A” and “B” confirmed that if I was willing to expend the energy, it could meet the demands of academia.
As I progressed through my undergraduate courses at the community college I evolved a pattern of study that worked for me. I took copious notes in classes. I then recopied them in an organized format. I constructed lists of questions that might be asked in a test and prepared the answers. Required papers were written and edited. This process resulted in acquiring study skills but it also had another outcome.
I came to appreciate the value of understanding. There was a real pleasure to be gained in understanding the “what causes what and why” of a subject. I would later define the information processing pattern focused on pursuit of understanding as a Hypothetical Analyzer (HA) style. My new found appreciation did not cause me to come to use HA as my “go to” default approach to life. It did, however, create an appreciation of learning and knowledge creation that would remain with me for a lifetime.
It is worth noting that my RS orientation benefited from the simplicity of the academic success formula. Grades determined whether certifications (e.g., degrees) are awarded. Grades were awarded primarily on the basis of tests. Tests typically involve regurgitation of course learning's or the successful application of predefined patterns (e.g., formulas, writing formats, physical skills like dissection, etc.). This kind of transparent formula fit the RS strategy of targeting immediately visible outcomes. Educational efforts targeted at groups with high RS commitments should probably incorporate highly visible, step-by-step elements leading to explicit, visible outcomes into their designs.
My grades continued to hold at the “A” and “B” levels throughout my community college years. This was the era before grade inflation came to grip colleges. A grade of “C” really denoted an adequate level of performance. My stream of A’s and B’s provided me with a solid certification of competitive academic adequacy. The increased confidence this created had motivational consequences. My academic ambitions rose from an Associate to a Bachelor’s degree.
After about 30 semester hours in a Community College I felt confident enough in my abilities to apply to a 4-year degree granting college. The college was in Chicago—about a 35 minute train ride from the suburbs where I lived. I had a full time job working nights from 11PM to 7AM. That meant that I was available to attend ordinary day classes. Again focus and energy applied without concern for efficiency carried the day. I was able to carry a full academic load and still support my family.
I earned my bachelors with a reasonably strong grade point history. I had a job that paid enough to support my family. I had demonstrated the stamina needed to hold a full time job and full time school registration. Graduate education was a viable option,
My motive for majoring in business administration was that it promised the quickest return on educational investment. This also was the time of the space program, integrated circuits, computers and advances in the biological sciences (e.g., birth control, vaccines, etc.). The value of advanced education was being highlighted everywhere and business was no exception. The MBA was the “hot” degree and held promise of high demand and premium salaries. I decided to “give it a shot.”
THE MBA
True to my RS leanings, I applied to only one school—Northwestern University. It was (and is) a top ten business school with very restrictive admissions requirements. My travel from high school drop out to college graduate had given me an exaggerated sense of self-worth—a “fat head” in colloquial terms. I did not even consider the possibility that my application would be declined. That turned out to be a mistake.
The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) was a mandatory requirement at the time I applied to grad school. I did not do well. My grade fell in about the 40th percentile. This would have been a “red flag” to most people. However I figured that my grades would be enough to carry me over the hurdle. I was wrong again.
I received a letter from Northwestern declining my application. Again true to my RS style I was physically on my way to the school within minutes of reading the rejection letter. No thought, no plan, just reaction (the style is called a “Reactive” Stimulator). Upon arrival I by-passed the secretary and literally barged into the Admission Officer’s office. The RS style tends to cause a person to favor asking for forgiveness rather than for permission.
This level of assertiveness was apparently not common experience at Northwestern. The Admission Officer was a little taken aback by my assertiveness and allowed me to make my case. I proceeded to do so with considerable animation. I told him that I had taken the exam after working a 16 hour shift and with no preparation. I claimed that this made the GRE results unrepresentative. I maintained that my grades and personal situation confirmed that view. I acknowledged my misjudgment but I argued that I was the kind of person Northwestern wanted as an alumnus. A degree of arrogance is a common RS attribute which I did not lack.
The GRE was a “one strike and you are out” test at the time of my application. My plea to the Admissions Officer plea caused him to take the unusual step of authorizing a retake of the exam. This was not a home run I had hoped for but it did keep me in the game. This time I had a better idea of the stakes involved.
I immediately signed up for the next GRE exam. Again the discipline of basic training was applied. I went out and bought every GRE test preparation book I could find and went through them page by page. I do not remember my re-take score but apparently it was high enough to merit admission. I received another letter from the school this time it welcoming me as a student.
A realistic look at my MBA experience suggests that it was not my grades, GRE score or intellectual “brilliance” that earned my admission. It is more likely that the immediacy, forcefulness and logic of my response to the poor GRE score that got me admitted. It can reasonably be argued that my arrogant RS strategy was the cause of the initial rejection. It is also likely my grades alone did not warrant acceptance. Rather it was probably the speed and forcefulness of my RS response that turned the trick. Styles can work in both positive and negative directions on the same subject at about the same time.
My progress through the MBA was a reasonably straight forward. The same strategies as used in my undergraduate years continued to apply. There were instances where my RS style may have influenced some minor adventures. For example, I helped initiate a parade of students into the Dean’s office complaining about the competency of a mathematics professor. Or the time Norman (another student) and I figured out how to use the punch card duplicating machine to satisfy an assignment involving programming the quadratic equation in the FORTRAN language. While it can be spiced up with these anecdotes the MBA experience was really just a two-year slog.
Upon graduation employment opportunities arrived as predicted. I interviewed 60 firms on campus before joining an automotive firm in Detroit Michigan. The choice was simple. They offered the most money, the most generous fringe benefits and multiple avenues for advancement on a worldwide basis. It was time to get that “return on investment” that had underpinned my educational efforts.
CORPORATE AMERICA
Education gave me a command of intellectual matters. It did not give me knowledge of the culture that I would encounter upon graduation. At the time that I joined the automotive firm it had about 400,000 employees and was probably at the peak of its bureaucratic organizational discipline. For example, the three ring binders holding the Comptroller’s Manual occupied an entire wall in the finance department. The likely implications of a highly structured environment on my somewhat unruly RS tendencies had completely escaped my attention.
It turned out that first job at the new firm set the course of my career. That first job was to maintain bank balances in multiple banks worldwide in a way that optimized the interest income while satisfying line of credit deposit requirements. The job was tedious, exacting and provided little action based satisfaction. It was likely among the worst jobs a strong RS could encounter. Things did not look good but chance once again intervened.
The banking department had a Telex terminal in the backroom (a kind of an old fashion teletype machine that you might see in the old black & white movies). It was ordinarily used to exchange information with various banks. I discovered that it also connected to the GE time-sharing computer network—a brand new innovation at the time. No one in finance knew how to program so management was not concerned with machine access. It was ignored by everyone but me.
The programming language on the GE timeshare machine was called BASIC. It resembled the FORTRAN of my graduate school years so I came in with a bit of “how to” knowledge. There were also programming manuals on the wall behind the Telex. These provided the remainder of the “how to.” But the system itself offered a bit of a challenge. It only allowed 2K programs (2,048 bytes of memory) but those programs to be linked in kind of a chain. I figured that if we could put a person on the moon under these size constraints, I could probably figure out how to program a banking report. So I began programming after working hours.
Working after hours meant that I did not get any annoying questions about what I was doing. This mitigated the need to advise anyone of what I was doing or to ask anyone’s permission to do it. Things tend to move faster that when you choose to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Over the course of a month I managed to program my job out of existence.
About the time I finished programming GE sent the firm a bill for about $550 (about $4,000 in 2019 money). A visit to my manager’s office soon followed. I was told that junior analysts should not be spending that kind of money without first obtaining permission. I apologized and claimed to be unaware of the cost (which was true, I did not know the exact cost). I also pointed out that they could now permanently save the cost of one professional staff member. On the whole, the firm was ahead of the game. I was chastised by management but forgiven.
The fast response RS orientation served me well in this situation. Had I moved at a slower pace the bill from GE would have arrived before I finished. It is virtually certain that my efforts would have been stopped. That could and probably would have dramatically changed the course of my career. If you are going to engage in questionable activities it is probably best to move quickly rather than deliberately.
My Banking Department adventure had inadvertently created a personal “brand.” Managers looking to improve their areas of responsibility began to recruit me as a person who could initiate change. Even in a highly bureaucratic firm, change required that I be given a bit of discretionary latitude. This made the firm a tolerable environment for a young man with strong RS tendencies.
Life was good but not great. Interesting assignments and access to advanced technology insulated me from bureaucratic drudgery. The money, a lot of “pats on the head” and regular promotions kept me interested. Getting a new car of my choice every 6 months was a strong reminder of which side my bread was butter on. However, the intellectual adventure I enjoyed in college was absent. It turned out that the answer for filling the mental gap was down the street.
MORE SCHOOL
There was a university about 4 miles from the office. One of the generous fringe benefits that had lured me into joining the firm came into play. The firm offered full tuition reimbursement for any university level class on any subject. I do not know what the firm had intended to accomplish with this policy but it gave me a way to keep my mind engaged.
Intellectual boredom was the underlying motive powering my return to graduate education. My choice of economics as a subject of that study is not that clear. It may have involved gaining “bragging rights” among my peers in the finance organization. Or it may have been an insurance policy against future employment difficulties. Or it may have been born of my favorable initial experiences in the junior college. But whatever the reason I signed up for the Master’s degree program in Economics.
The time spent in the economics program was largely unremarkable. It is worth noting that my interest was in microeconomics. This area is focused on how people make economic decisions on a small, local scale. I did not know it at the time but the area would come to influence the future development of “I Opt” technology. In any event, I graduated with a straight “A” grade point. That pumped me up a bit so I signed up for the economics PhD program. Things did not work out as well at this level.
The higher level classes focused heavily on detailed particulars. The program tended to focus on esoteric questions, intricate details and exhaustive mathematics. I recall being frustrated over the minutiae. Patience is not an attribute typically associated with the RS strategic style. A lack of intellectual satisfaction a focus on trivial matters called for a reaction. It was not long in coming.
My response was simple and direct. One day I spontaneously walked out of the Economics and into the Sociology department. There was no plan. I had an interest in sociology since those early classes at the junior college. I knew that the subject was unlikely to involve the minutiae I had encountered in economics. Since I had no specific end use agenda for the PhD degree sociology as a subject was as good as any other. What mattered was that my mind remained engaged.
I found the Department Chair in Sociology to be very willing to facilitate the change. I think he was tickled pink over having someone from economics petition to enter the sociology program. But whatever the reason, the move was quick and effortless—it was an optimal RS outcome.
Strategic styles do not affect everything but they do influence how a lot of things get done. An example is the way I handled the formal requirements of a PhD in Sociology. One of these was that PhD candidates were required to demonstrate of basic competence in a second language. This was a problem for me since I avoided language in my undergraduate years as a way of preserving my grade point average.
A “logical” strategy for meeting the language requirement would be to take a class. A PhD normally takes between 5 and 7 years to complete. There was plenty of time to do language classwork. However, the RS strategy tends to look for the easiest rather than the most logical way. Since adequacy rather than excellence was my standard of acceptance all I needed was to pass the test, not to speak the language. The testing procedure seemed to offer a solution to my problem.
The Princeton Placement Test was used to gauge language proficiency. The test was a multiple choice written exam offered every quarter at the cost about $15 (about $100 in 2019 money). The first time I took the exam I fell short of the required score by only 50 points. I figured it was virtually certain that if I retook exam every quarter, sooner or later I would pass simply by chance alone. I had created an RS type of option.
My RS orientation kept me looking for easier ways even after I had isolated the “easy” Princeton strategy. As it turned out I came up with another even easier way. I had gained a command of computer programming in the course of my job. At the time (the late 1970’s) programming was not a widely available skill—especially in a “soft science” area like sociology. I figured that there was a probability that I could use programming to satisfy the language requirement. It was worth a shot. If it did not work I could always fall back to my Princeton option.
The department chair had the authority to declare that the language requirement as satisfied. So he became my focal point. I produced several large 3-ring binders of working programs to prove my capability. I then made the case that computer programming had a grammar, syntax, context and semantics. I argued that it was a reasonable substitute for French or Spanish in terms of difficulty and potential scholarly value. The department chair agreed and declared the language requirement to be satisfied. One down!
The second stumbling block was a residency requirement. PhD applicants were required to have at least 1 year in full time residency. Full time was defined as 12 semester hours during the Applicant phase of the PhD program where actual classes had to be attended.
I was able to satisfy part of the attendance requirement with evening classes. However, there were not enough advanced classes offered in the evening to fully meet the requirement. I had to attend some day classes if I was going to meet the residency requirement. This meant that I had to convince my managers to allow my absence for a few hours during the working day a couple of times a week.
This does not sound like much of a challenge today. But in the 1970’s manufacturing was a rigid environment. Compounding this was the fact that my direct manager was a rigid accountant. For him, how the work was being done was as important as the purpose of the work itself. Even if I were to seek permission, it was unlikely I would get it from him.
Fortunately the RS strategy tends not notice rules to which most people subscribe. This opens the door to many of additional options. In this case the relevant rule to be overcome revolved around the chain of command. Violating the chain of command was considered a major organizational offense at the time. And so that is exactly what I did.
My computer programming skill had got me involved in modelling a major at a United Kingdom facility. While not part of my regular job the assignment required me to meet with the VP of area on a somewhat regular basis. In one of those meetings I mentioned to him that I wanted to take a course in statistics that only met in the early afternoon 3 times a week. I never actually said that it was going to help my modelling but neither did discourage him from arriving at that conclusion. The upshot was that the VP said it was okay with him for me to take a few hours off a few times a week.
Now armed with explicit permission of the VP I promptly relayed his message to my immediate manager. I left the impression that this was a general permission rather than merely applicable to one course. In any event, my manager’s respect for rules and his respect for the chain of command caused him to take directive as a mandate. I had no further problem in meeting the PhD residency requirement. Two down!
The final aspect of the PhD meriting notice is dissertation approval by a committee of five professors. My PhD advisor headed my committee and the remaining people were from various other academic areas. The usual practice was that you presented drafts of your dissertation; the committee reads them, meets and offers criticism. You then go back and do it again. There were stories of this process going on for years. This possibility did not sit well with my RS inclinations. So I developed a “quick cycle” strategy.
The committee would meet at my request whenever I had something to review. They expected that the “something” would be excerpts from the dissertation which they had criticized in the prior meeting. I decided that if I could change the “cost” of review I could expedite dissertation approval. Fortunately technology had just provided me with a tool that facilitated the execution of this strategy.
Word processors had just been introduced to replace typewriters. I had access to them at work. They were not yet generally available in universities and so professors were unfamiliar with their power. My committee members were used to just getting the changes that resulted from their criticisms. That meant they had only to reread a part of the draft dissertation.
My “quick cycle” strategy involved using my strong RS capabilities to quickly make the changes required by their criticisms. I would then use word processors to introduce those changes, retype the entire dissertation and deliver completed draft back to committee members. This all happened over about a month.
While I always referenced the general area of change I made no effort to highlight them in the text itself. This meant that committee members had to re-read large sections of a rather dull and ponderous work. This was undoubtedly a tedious, taxing and painful process. The criticisms began to drop off sharply after about the second cycle. Dissertation approval came soon thereafter. Three down!
The RS is not typically seen as a dominant style favoring academic pursuits. Using this strategy to overcome challenging PhD requirements shows the flexibility of strategic styles. Any style can do anything but how they go about doing it will be very different. In this case it is fair to see my efforts as “gaming the system.” But that “gaming” did actually satisfy the requirements. It was just not in a manner that the creators of those requirements had expected. In final analysis I was awarded the PhD and neither it nor I suffered any enduring harm from “bending of the rules.”
WRAPPING UP CORPORATE AMERICA
Over the course of my early career I made steady progress climbing up the organizational chain of command. I rose to manager level in the automotive industry, to director level in food processing and to a Vice President level in a Fortune 500 Real Estate firm specializing in shopping malls. The theme running through all of these positions was change. People hired and promoted me to do something different than was then being done.
My career in corporate America ended with a stint in at a small private investment bank in Boston. A leader of a six person private firm had found a way to make an awful lot of money financing barges and tug boats using other people’s money. RS's like shiny objects and this was a shiny green object (i.e., money). This looked to me like a great opportunity so I took it.
My timing could not have been worse. Investment bankers live on commissions. Commissions are paid on deals that get done. Deals in investment banking require access to credit. Credit access depends on a permissive Federal Reserve discount window. On the very day I landed in Boston the Federal Reserve took action to severely restrict credit. They effectively announced that they were slamming shut their discount lending window. Poof! No more money.
I lasted for about a year. I did do some interesting stuff. For example, one potential deal involved trying to buy all of the garbage trucks of multiple cities in England from the UK Post Office. Another involved financing multi-million dollar tug boats. However, not a single deal closed. No deals, no money. I did not need the PhD to figure out that things were not going well.
After about a year it became obvious that I was failing as an investment banker. I figured that I did not need help to fail—I could do it all by myself. So I returned to my original home base in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I still owned a home. This was not a fun time. Initially I sat around wondering what I was going to do with the remainder of my life. I was 50 years old at a time and considered way “over the hill” for employment in corporate America.
The RS style uses emotions as the key component of its decision strategy. Rational methods take too long to be useful as a guide to an opportunistic strategy. Unfortunately emotions do not confine themselves to just guiding decisions. They tend to permeate the life stance of an RS. During this period where my future hung in the balance those emotions began to exert a heavy negative and painful force on my attitude.
Fortunately the RS strategy also provides methods to handle the emotional swings. The severity and persistence of my present situation called for the “nuclear option”–act directly and forcefully on the matter causing the emotions stress. The matter that needed to be addressed was just what I was going to be doing with the rest of my life.
My experience with a small investment firm gave me a roadmap. The formula was easy. Sell something for more than it cost to make or buy it. So after several months in gut wrenching torment I finally just decided to start a company, look for something to sell and get on with my life. This is not the kind of planning taught in school but it did the job of relieving the emotional stress.
LAUNCHING THE FIRM
My launch of a new firm began with naming it. The company’s name had to be totally benign since the firm was being created without a commitment to any particular product. However, I knew that whatever I ended up doing was going to be done in a professional manner. I also knew that selling was going to require communicating with buyers. Hence arose the name “Professional Communication Inc.” No matter what I ended up doing, the name was going to fit.
The next step was incorporation. That turned out to be easy. I bought a book on starting a company in Michigan, tore out and completed the forms and mailed them into the State of Michigan with a $65 fee. My certificate of incorporation arrived within a few weeks. The firm had been born. The only remaining issue was what to do with it.
The firm flopped around for about a year. I tried instructional video tapes, referrals, ISO 9000 quality training and a little product that provided an individual analysis similar to Myers-Briggs, Kersley-Bates and other similar diagnostic products that were being offered by established, well-entrenched firms.
The little analysis was later to be named “I Opt”. At this time it was assembled by hand using measurements created by a 24 question survey form. The clumsy preparation process; an entrenched competition and a minimal 8 page report made the little analysis the least promising of the products being tested. But it was also the most interesting. It was consistently accurate and always resonated with the people who tried it. I could not help wondering why.
I spoke to the report’s creator. He and one other person had developed the little analysis as a tool in response to a consulting gig they had secured. I was told that there was no specific theory or methodology guiding its creation. Rather the product was born out of their decades of experience. It worked and they saw no need to explain why. In the course of these conversations I managed to acquire usage rights for no upfront cost. There was now no reason not to keep “fiddling” with it.
Programming was one of the early “fiddles.” I wrote a program that automatically generated the report. This moved the little report a step closer to becoming a viable product. It was not a big revenue generator but neither was it a big cash drain. My intellectual curiosity could continue to be indulged without financially damaging the firm.
As I “fiddled” insights that explained one facet or another of why the little analysis worked began to accumulate. For example, I was able to identify information processing as the item that was being measured by the survey. I also found that the measure was being made on a ratio (i.e., like a ruler) rather than ordinal (i.e., big, bigger, biggest) scale. These and many other similar insights began to pile up as did my interest.
In the early 1990’s the telephone was still the principal method of communication. I made a practice of calling everyone who had purchased the “I Opt” individual analysis. These conversations provided the challenges, insights and observations that helped build, broaden and deepen the insights into the technology. A theory was being born and fleshed out once conversation at a time.
The above approach is an example of the RS style being applied to an academic subject. The typical academic process involves fully specifying a theory, subjecting it to “peer review” and only then deploying it in a filed setting. This produces reliable, verifiable knowledge at a high cost, slow speed and much tedious effort.
The RS approach is to iterate incremental improvements. The field setting becomes the laboratory where opportunities are identified and deficiencies corrected. Issues are addressed one at a time until there are none left. The RS strategy iterates to excellence rather than demanding excellence from the onset. Conducted with appropriate rigor the end result of both the academic and RS process is the same level of excellence. The outcome is just obtained by two different routes.
REFINING THE THEORY
Important advances regularly arose in the course of conversations with clients. For example, a rubber supply company in upper Michigan applied the individual report to their management team. When I did my follow-up call the in-house consultant said the reports were accurate but “so what?” He felt that they did not help improve group functioning. My reply was that “I’ll call you tomorrow and show you “so what!” At that point I had no idea what I was going to “show” him. Impetuous commitments are standard fare for the strong RS.
The rubber supply initial contact phone call happened about 3 PM. I immediately began work assembling a new report using what I had on hand. The bits and pieces of insight that I had been gathering were some of the tools at hand. My programming skill provided other tools. By 3AM I had constructed a new report using these bits and pieces as well as some insights that arose in the construction process.
I delivered the report as promised. A phone call with the client confirmed that the new report was an accurate group assessment. The prescriptions it offered also appeared to be on target. The client then added that it was “too bad it wasn’t available when we were having meeting about it.” So the effort had not gained a new customer. But it did create a new product—TeamAnalysis. Over the course of the next year or so the report was refined into a core product and remains such today.
The growing pile of insights and tools highlighted the fact that long-term, detailed memory is not one of my strengths. I kept reinventing things that I had already invented. The obvious need was to capture the knowledge externally. Programming solved part of the problem by embedding knowledge in code. However, many other insights, discoveries and random bits of knowledge were in danger of being lost. .
The obvious answer was to capture the knowledge in an organized manner. I was educationally well equipped to write a book that could also serve as a marketing tool. So that is what I did. The book was written over 6 weeks and self-published in 1996. It did its job. It codified a lot of the insights and operations. It also helped demonstrate that “I Opt” was a viable alternative to existing products.
My RS based memory issues and client insights were not the only thing influencing the development of “I Opt.” Technology itself also played a role. For example, in 1998 I attempted to put a TwoPerson report on line. The idea seemed sound. Providing an analysis of a relationship rather than of an individual would differentiate “I Opt” from the others in the field. Instant results of online access would further enhance the differentiation.
Sound ideas sometimes do not work. This was one of those. At this juncture the internet was changing rapidly. Competing browsers came and went with some frequency. The browsers that remained were always being revised to correct bugs and add features. I got the report running on-line but found that program worked on some browsers and not on others. I did not have the resources to continually update the programming to keep up with the browser changes. Failure was the only option. So I took it.
However, that failure had a silver lining. Programming the Two Person Report gave me an in-depth command of Visual Basic for Application (VBA)—a programming language native to Microsoft’s Office suites (i.e., Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, etc.). In the coming years I would use these tools to create a variety of new reports (e.g. coaching, career, sales, learning and leadership among others). Each of these reports caused me to focus deeper into one or another aspect of “I Opt” technology. Step by step they helped to refine the theory as well as contributing some revenue to the firm.
“I Opt” technology rested on a totally new foundation (i.e., information processing) and was growing in its reach and complexity. During this time seminars were the principal way of getting operationally relevant information to clients. So I began to offer seminars on the use of “I Opt” technology in the mid to late 1990’s. Marketing was the primary motive but it turned out that the event also served as a major product development function.
The seminars were usually attended by between 10 and 20 people. Attendees were not passive recipients of knowledge. They tended to be people with a deep interest in organizational studies. They actively interrogated as well as absorbed. I was challenged when I attempted to “gloss over” and issue. Elaborations were demanded when my explanations were foggy. The seminar process forced refinement of both theory and practice.
The third leg of theory refinement was research. Beginning in the mid 1990’s we began to supported client submissions to various publications—in both juried and professional publications. Again, the main motive was marketing but a strengthening of the theory was inevitable. For example, we were able to gather evidence-based proof that the benefits provided by “I Opt” were durable and had a multi-year life span.
About the year 2000 we began a research publication labeled “JOE” (Journal of Organizational Engineering). “JOE” ran for about 5 years. It was intended as a permanent and transparent idea forum. It served as both a marketing tool and a means to develop, refine and extend the theoretical underpinnings of the technology. The publication was intellectually valuable but economically hopeless. Technology came to the rescue.
In about 2006 the research publications moved to Google Blogger. This accelerated the research pace since we no longer had to wait for typesetting and printing. In addition, distribution was much wider. To date about 250,000 people have accessed the research and over 50 scientifically grounded studies have been published. Each one of these served to both extend the knowledge base and insure knowledge retention.
The new reports, seminars and research combined to create a strong theory that now under-girds “I Opt” technology. None of these efforts involved extended periods of “blue sky” thinking typical of academic research. In one form or another they were all response based. This strategy of directed reaction is not applicable to all areas. But where it does apply it is a fast, inexpensive and adaptive way of creating a knowledge base.
There is one added factor that contributed to the development and refinement of “I Opt” technology—the staff members. Over the course of 25 or so years many people have left their mark on the technology. They assembled report packages, executed computer programs, edited articles and consulted with clients. But their contribution did not stop there.
They contributed ideas that improved both the graphics and textual content of the reports. They were also in a position identify problems and had a motive for seeing them corrected. I may have been willing to dismiss glitches, they were not. They acted as an ongoing control function directing, editing and restraining my RS tendencies.
END GAME
My working life began to change in a subtle manner with our telephone protocol. It was practice for anyone to pick up a ringing telephone. About my 72nd year the staff asked that I let others answer the phone. Various “reasons” were given. But the likely motive was obvious. I remained a strong RS even as I aged. An RS “reacts” to input. Phone calls represented potential input. Less phone interaction, less input, less reaction.
The next restraining initiative involved attempts to direct my energies. For example, past publications—textual and video—were judged to be dated and in need of revision. This was true. But it was also true that working in those areas kept me confined to matters that promised the possibility of least damage. The online certification was revised, multiple articles were “cleaned up” and an index of past research was produced. It was a worthwhile effort.
Somewhere around my 75th year still more efforts emerged. The staff began to encourage me to reduce my “in office” time. It started with suggestions that I move up my starting time by an hour. It was then suggested that I leave a bit early. The net result was steadily decreasing “in office” time. The strategy is obvious. Less time in the office reduced the opportunity for reactive responses.
The notable aspect of all of these efforts is that no one is trying to change my strategic style preferences. I continued to use the RS strategy as my primary navigation tool. Staff efforts focused on controlling the environment in which my somewhat impulsive tendencies are expressed. Adjusting environments is always easier than changing people. This approach has the highest likelihood of producing the desired result. “I Opt” insights apply universally—including to the creator of the technology.
So how am I taking all of this? I relinquished the CEO title a number of years ago. The current CEO is an experienced woman who has 20 years of experience with the technology. Her preferences for resolving issues are totally different than mine. She uses the methodical LP strategy as her primary navigation tool. She is sensitive to different variables, acts at a more methodical pace and plans over longer horizons.
This change in perspective is needed. The technology itself has matured. Like the Pythagorean Theorem “I Opt” has been shown to work regardless of where, when or with whom it is applied. There is no longer any question of if it works. The battles I fought 20 years ago have been won. There is no need to keep fighting them.
But the environment within which “I Opt” is being applied is changing rapidly. Text and email has replaced voice as the principal communication media. The internet has substantially replaced seminars as the favored method of learning about a technology. Younger people who are sensitive to current issues, variables and circumstances are needed to carry the firm and the technology into the future.My challenge is to keep my mouth shut and let them do it. So that is what I will try to do.
And what does a 77 year old RS do while letting others guide action? This is something I have yet to find out. This paper is the first attempt to continue to contribute under the new circumstances. My work in maintaining the firm’s database is another. The possibility of updating the 1996 book is still another option. The good part of my current condition is that there is always something to do. The bad part is that these things do not carry many reactive opportunities that lend the excitement and energy that power much of a Reactive Stimulator’s life. Whether I will be able to confine myself to these non-RS type activities remains to be seen.
