Global Centrum: Chicago

Global Priors Council

July 29, 1975

This evening and tomorrow evening we will be having what we are calling a revolutionary lab. Tonight we will deal with battleplanning or tactical thinking, and tomorrow evening we will consider sophistication. These labs are an attempt to get at (in terms of those two arenas) the edge we have experienced in these two arenas during the past year. We are trying to say for ourselves and share commonly what we have learned.

This evening we are dealing with the question that was raised in one of the reports earlier today: "What is it that you do that makes you effective?" His answer was "Methods," and regardless of the response, that is the right answer. Our job is to spend a bit of time in order to get hold of where we have seen ourselves acting in a fashion that we would call effective. When that has happened, what was going on? And what of that is reduplicable? For if we are to do mass awakenment or mass evangelism in the world it will be done, in my opinion, by communicating these methods through having people use them, and by spreading that communication massively across the globe. Therefore, for the sake of the task, as well as for our own sake, we must get said to ourselves very rationally how we, in fact, act effectively.

This has been a problem for us throughout most of our history, and, in the course of the last twenty years, we have come at it in many different ways. Our most recent effort has been the work on LENS and on the Social Methods School. This work is held in the chart called METHODS OF EFFECTIVITY. Perhaps you can imagine the relationship best if you take a piece of paper and put the words Effective Action in the center. Then draw three orbits around Effective Action. In the inside orbit, around that center of Effective Action draw five dynamics and label that orbit, Corporate Action. In the second orbit again draw five dynamics and label that orbit Tactical Thinking or Indicative Battleplanning, whichever you wish. The final orbit is called Depth Motivity, and that, too, has five dynamics. The names of the fifteen dynamics are held on the METHODS OF EFFECTIVITY chart. And that set of spinning plates, fifteen plates, however you decide to order and organize them when they are all spinning is what we are doing when we are doing effective action .

The METHODS OF EFFECTIVITY chart was designed to be handed out in LENS, but it is not ready by a long shot. In fact, it has only been handed out twice to the best of my knowledge: once to the Social Methods School last December, and then this evening. That is a clue to the extent to which we ought to trust the details of that chart. The level of the fifteen is pretty good if you change "space" and "time" under Depth Motivity to something like Radically Expanded Space and Radically Exploded Time. Below the level of the fifteen we need something far more practical. What is there is probably accurate, but it is too abstract. Now, having said that, in my opinion, that chart is the best pull together we have at the moment of the comprehensive set of methods. It is a screen to allow you to do your own thinking and brooding.

This evening we will look at that set of 5 labeled Tactical Thinking. I am going to talk for a little while about Tactical Thinking and then we will do a simulation process using the Metro Cadre Network as one crucial arena for all of us these days. After going through that battleplanning session, we will step back from it and ask "Now what do we have to say about this process of Indicative Battleplanning?"

I read a book not long ago, in which the author talks about journey in very practical and imaginal ways. One of his images is "gumption trap." He says that on your journey you often get caught in a gumption trap. He illustrates it this way. In Indonesia, they catch monkeys by putting some rice in a box, nailing down the lid and tying the box to a tree. In one end of the box is a hole just big enough for the monkey to swing his hand down and get it into the box to grab the rice. The monkey reaches down, picks up a handful of rice and, of course, with the rice in his fist, he cannot remove his hand from the hole. The natives come and pick up the monkey. This is an example of a gumption trap.

The name of the gumption trap is "value rigidity." That monkey's problem was value rigidity. It is fun to play around with other titles for the gumption trap that the monkey was caught in. It could have been that his tactic book said, "Today go out and get some rice." Maybe it was simply that he didn't have a blackboard and butcher paper, and therefore could not do an indicative battleplan to figure out how to get out of that situation. At any rate, you know we have all been there. That is our problem.

It is hard to state the real issue relative to Indicative Battleplanning. On the one hand, we know a great deal in terms of procedure. We are experts at doing workshops. On the other hand, we know how to operate fairly effectively, simply out of our intuitions. The problem is that if you intend to do massive corporate action, then somehow those two things have to get together. To me this image is somewhat similar to the image we use about prayer in connection with the guts and what is going on up here. It is the same problem, I think, that we are faced with here. On the one hand, you say to yourself, "Now I must do my battleplans for this quarter and have a set of procedures that have been tried and tested and sent out from a Room E somewhere. These procedures say that this is the way you do Indicative Battleplanning this quarter." So you come up with your tactical system and pharisaically follow it. And you find, in the middle of the quarter, that you are not doing some of the things that you sense you ought to be doing. Yet, your battleplan says, "Today you do X". So, you do X. They used to call that "cookbook chemistry." On the other hand, you say, "I have discovered that Indicative Battleplanning done that way just does not work. I already know what needs to be done, so I will just do it." These are the two extremes: either we do not do Indicative Battleplanning and run the risk of forgetting what we know; or we do it, follow it pharisaically as some sort of formula.

Indicative Battleplanning is preparing yourself for effective action. The question is how we get said what we know about Indicative Battleplanning, and do it in such a way that it is seen both as a human dynamic and as a particular kind of procedure. Before we spend some time talking about your insights relative to the issues that are involved there, let me walk through the five dynamics of the method indicating some of the breakthroughs we observed in the Task Force this summer.

Indicative Battleplanning is a kind of continuous circle on which five plates are spinning. They are called Practical Vision, Underlying Contradictions, Creative Proposals, Systematic Tactics and Catalytic Implementation. These things go on continuously and dynamically. Practical vision has to do with what you are doing at the moment, as well as with your dreams of the future. It has to do with your ideology, with your current operating programs, with what you are actually doing and with what you perceive to be your future direction. All of that spins together to be the Practical Vision out of which you are operating at any given moment. Practical Vision is being blocked in some fashion by what we have called the Underlying Contradiction. The key word that we have discovered over this last year is the word, "challenge," to talk about contradiction. You are trying to get at that which is challenging a body of people beyond their ability to see how they could meet that challenge. The third spinning plate is Creative Proposal. The key word is "creative", as opposed to "more and better." Any kind of gimmickry you can find to allow creativity to flow is the trick in that dynamic. In Tactical System, "System" is the key. A set of actions, a whole system of tactics, no one of which by itself does anything, pulls off the set of proposals that you have created. That is the very specific design or construct of the program that you intend to do.

Catalytic Implementation is the arena in which most of our work has been done. The four categories underneath it should be changed to Catalytic Miracles, Project Framing, Inclusive Phasing and Operating Program. This arena has to do with the miracles that will launch and sustain the tactical system. These miracles are not the same as the tactical system. The tactical system is a set of constructs and programs that you intend to implement, but the way in which you get it off the ground is a series of initial miracles. And miracles will sustain that program, as well. The Project Framing involves the planning and preparation, authorization, funds, troops -- ­ everything that you need in order to win with your set of actions. Inclusive Phasing means designing Catalytic Implementation into a workable imaginal timeline.

The fog about Indicative Batteplanning is located between those last two dynamics, Tactical System and Catalytic Implementation. It is the fuzz between dealing methodologically with the Tactical System and dealing methodologically with Catalytic Implementation. Somebody this summer made the comment that in a parish in which you wanted to move slowly, all you would do is framing. You see the ridiculousness of that? If you do not have a program, what is there to frame? If you have authorization but nothing to authorize, then, when people ask you what they can do for you, you have no answer for them. You must have a tactical system to build a frame around in the first place. This kind of fog is present both in our thinking and in our actual operation.

The keys to Indicative Battleplanning depend on the moment. I guess that that is always the case. At this moment, Tactical System seems to be a key to the whole process. I think that what has gone on in Majuro and what has been happening in the Primal Community Experiment bear this out. It is also true in my own work attempting to translate these methods into the everyday situation of a job. You work through your practical vision, your contradictions and your proposals, and you come up with a highly rational construct that lays out your twenty­two constructs and your eighty-eight programs or their equivalents. That tactical system becomes your practical vision for that moment. That is what the Fifth City Tactical System represents. Once it has been created, it becomes your vision over against which you do your implementation. In that context, you ask yourself, "What miracles are going to get that off the ground?" Obviously, the process continues. You are always refining and redoing and rebuilding that tactical system and that set of catalytic miracles.

Framing has loomed as another key during the past year. It involves spelling out in great detail -- leaving no stone unturned -- what it would take to build a framework around a particular tactical system in such a fashion that you always win. There is no alternative but to win.

Where effective Tactical Thinking, effective Indicative Battleplanning is going on, I think three charts -- maybe four -- appear. The first is a highly rationally designed, practical, Tactical System. The second is a highly practical Project Framing design which lays out, in some detail, the forces required to provide both support and actual work for the project and the structures, whether ones you have to create or ones you have to catalyze, which are necessary to frame and to do that particular action. The third is a rational chart of doable catalytic miracles. These miracles are certainly not on a one­to­one basis with the tactical system, but quarter by quarter. They are the means of implementing that tactical system. Those three charts are a clue to where you see battleplanning going on, as well as a sign of the kind of preparation that allows winning effective action to take place. A Tactical System chart, a Project Framing design and a Catalytic Miracle chart. Fourthly, you probably need an imaginal way of picturing the flow of the project. This is the Inclusive Phasing design. We need to talk a great deal more about all of this before we are finished this evening. But perhaps, to get ourselves operating out of a common base, we might begin to do our own reflecting.

Let's try to get some depth on the problem of bringing the Metro Cadre Network into being, by walking through Indicative Battleplanning quickly starting from whatever particular situation you have on your hands: What is your picture, abstractly or very concretely, of a Metro Cadre Network? What is your image of the exemplar Metro Cadre Network?

-- the globe -- 1936.

All right.

-- being in the same place at the same time every week.

Let's move quickly here.

-- six cities per circuit.

-- the Rotary Club -- all the different segments of society are represented.

What are the qualities of the Metro Cadre Network? What are the characteristics?

-- autonomous and corporate units.

-- spiritized study life -- action and commitment -- a global servant force.

At this point what seem to be the elements of our consensus relative to a Metro Cadre Network? What are the parts of the whole thing you feel we have already decided, that we are already doing?

-- priorship from the houses need to visit them regularly.

It is a dynamic, not an organization.

What else have we decided?.­ ­ ­

-- it is not foolproof. It is the key to intraglobality. Initially, it works between Development and Research; the primary activities and functions relate to the centrums of Development and Research.

-- would he explain what he meant?

-- it's the way initial involvement works. After someone has had a course, the training for any sort of commitment is the Metro Cadre dynamic. The initial involvement has been with Centrum. But maybe that does not need to be in the future, but so far the involvement has to do with some kind of hybrid between the dynamics of Development and Research. I am referring to the North Shore Cadre history; that is where I gathered that as our consensus.

This is really the same question. What in our own activity and in the world are the trends that are associated with the Metro Cadre Network?

-- people assuming responsibility for the geography where they are grounded.

-- concrete task forces.

-- bodies are operating with concrete task orientation these days. They show up there having come through various vehicles of impact, not only through RS­I or LENS or whatever. In terms of authorization drawing their wisdom of geography as never before­ they have circuits and circuitry replication.

What would you say at this moment are the three primary factors that are blocking the emergence of Metro Cadre Network? Take 30 seconds and write them down. As soon as you have three, star the best one, whatever "best'' means. OK, call them out.

-- there is no global campaign with accountability, like the Primal Community Experiment. You are on your own.

It is not a project. Another.

-- it is imaged as a dynamic of nurture rather than mission.

Others. Let's read them off quickly,

-- a corollary to that, undefined social contradictions are what you would be about.

Say what you mean by that.

-- if you are going to be mission in local community, mission in local parish rather than expansive, mass penetration.

-- concern for immediate rather than rational operations.

Let's get several.

-- common specialized format.

The block being a lack thereof. OK.

-- victimized mindset in small houses -- you can't get on the road

Let's hear some more from over here, back there, as well as over here, of course.

-- getting manuals that are common far enough ahead of time so that you can build a genuine consensus. What sort of a manual, for example?

-- like meeting format, conversation changes. It takes two or three weeks to build consensus. Otherwise comes off as ''All right, now we have the answers; now we can move."

-- having a bi-metro, regional, area battleplan to demand a Metro Cadre come into being.

What are others?

-- some way to the dynamic, to be able to say, ''On this day, I decided I would be Metro Cadre dynamic."

What are the themes or common elements that you hear in this list?

-- commonality.

-- authentic social engagement.

-- actual missional needs.

OK. Commonality, authentic social engagement, and missional need. Any other underlying themes in that list?

-- global­local tension.

The tension between the global and the local. Any others?

-- authenticating symbol system or symbolism.

Authenticating symbolism. OK.

What would you say now is the contradiction? Let's just get a short list here. What is the

contradiction we are over against in terms of bringing a Metro Cadre network into being?

-- a transrational picture of how Metro Cadres bring off the mission.

What's another one. Anyone -- this should be fairly easy.

-- unsymbolized response to human needs.

Unsymbolized and unplanned.

An unsymbolized response to human needs. Someone else. What is the contradiction?

-- failure to connect the need for troops to impact follow­up.

-- confusing the Metro Cadre dynamic with the meeting format. You do not have meeting formats, therefore you do not have a Metro Cadre dynamic.

-- confusion between programmatic thinking and mass evangelism.

I have five here. Which one of those would you say is the key?

-- transrational picture of how Metro Cadre brings off the mission.

If you could name two.

-- failure to connect the need for troops to your impact follow­up. What is the third one?

-- the unsymbolized and unplanned response to human need. The way of seeing how the Metro Cadre changes history.

Is that what we meant by that one? I am not clear myself what we meant. What is an example?

-- having those 3 things that you mentioned: the frame, the timeline, and that kind of thing is what I heard going on.

All right. That is somewhat related to the first one we named there -- the transrational picture. Would we say that first one is the key of the three? Transrational picture of how the Metro Cadre brings off the mission? We could spend some time getting concretion on that, but let's say that those are the three for the moment. Now take a couple seconds. List three proposals -- concrete, but very creative, as creative as you can -- that would begin to deal with those contradictions or the set of them. I like the gimmick, "Why don't we ask the queen for some money and three ships and see whether the world really is flat or not? Why don't we start at both ends of the United States with a rail and see if they would meet in the middle? Why don't we put an explosion inside of a metal cylinder and attach it to four wheels and see if we could do away with horses." Now we have a little different problem here, though the rails meeting at the center may not be totally disassociated. "Why don't we...?" Jot down a couple of answers to that.

-- Why don't we shut the house down for six months and everybody go on the road?

Everybody jot down two answers. What is one kind of activity that we can engage in that would begin to deal with these contradictions?

-- why don't we ride circuits anyway, regularly, with a task that calls for engagement and commitment?

-- why don't we create global design of Metro Cadre Network for every religious house?

What would that look like? Is that a map?

-- it would probably look like the name of each of the six metros surrounding each house in the world.

-- why don't we attach a Cadre campaign to Operations Centrum with an activity board where Global Centrums report to each of the houses on the Metro Cadre's progress during the year?

-- why don't we pick three weeks across the globe and launch 600 of them in 3 weeks? Every house launch 6 in those 3 weeks which would be 600 across the globe.

The same 3 weeks around the globe I heard you say first.

-- why don't we build a four year battleplan and see who stands and salutes?

Do you mean of those who built it or those who join?

-- why don't we build a mini­town meeting you do in one night and find people in every metro and bring it off?

-- why don't we have actual accountability for a concrete task?

-- why don't we give 3 concrete assignments to every guardian so they will have to get more troops so they can fulfill their assignments?

All

All right, -- off of this list are there any of those where you would like to hear the person say one more word so you have an image of the activity that is being talked about?

-- yes, the first one; it sounds more like a question than a proposal.

Ride circuits with tasks that call for engagement? What would be the component parts of that?

-- going through the circuits regularly­every 2 weeks or 4 weeks or whatever with a task like Town Meeting '76, where you call people to engage first rather than "pay your dues, be on time, do the right rituals and so forth."

If we were going to name five of those eight, which would begin to represent a set of proposals that would be workable, what would be one of those five that should be included?

-- mini­Town meeting.

I have a question if you include that one. What would you be out to do or why would you do that? Or how is it tied to these contradictions is really my question.

-- the contradiction has to do with transrational picture of doing the mission. I think the first step in doing the mission is finding out what the situation is in the local. Research is the basic key in moving into any local situation and then usually the main block of local people is images of what is not possible, but they have never tested them against reality. Once you ever get them to test their images against reality, they have a way to come back with the next step.

All right. Somebody else, what would be a second of that set of five?

-- ride circuits with a task that calls for engagement.

What would be the third one?

-- four year battleplan.

-- I don't understand that tactic.

Will you say a word?

-- it's tied very much to signifying the significance of the task, only it extends the picture; it gives you a longer range picture of what is demanded by history.

What is the fourth one?

-- global design.

Number five

-- three weeks across the globe to launch these.

Let's say for a moment that is what we will go with now. Now put that aside, but keep one eye on it. This set of proposals -- as quickly as you can put them together in terms of common threads. What are the particular things that we would have to do for these proposals to come off. You are not after a one­to­one relationship here. This is a fresh list, but related to this set of proposals. What particular actions would we have to go through to do these proposals? Things that would have to be done?

-- circuit design. ­

-- decide on 600 cities.

-- grid the world carefully.

-- assign responsibility for the circuits.

-- follow-up model.

As you continue to ride this circuit, what do you do next time?

-- build a leadership exchange dynamic co concretize the ''on behalf of..."

Others. Specific things you'd have to do for these 5 to be done.

-- metro liaison coordinator.

-- determine a catalytic task objective.

Do you mean by that - spell out the task that you intend to lay before them?

-- yes. At least initially for engagement.

-- get metro cadre members to ride circuit with you.

-- create some symbol that would hold the commonality of the task and possibly a song.

-- you have to have demonstration and then tell good stories about it.

What sort of demonstration.

-- do a circuit and make sure it comes off.

-- a transportation and financial model.

What else?

-- phase chart of each metro showing where they are and where they need to go.

-- one year's master images by quarter and at least 2 quarters ahead practical format for what goes on in everyone of those meetings.

-- demonstration metro cadre around each house.

-- handout design for each time you go -- what handouts you are going to give.

If you lay aside for a moment, those things that have to do with people, leadership and money, and say that those come next under framing, another dynamic, what are the arenas out of this list, the broad arenas of action we are suggesting?

-- symbolizing the radical task.

-- getting an imaginal picture of the area you are dealing with.

-- creating the basic design of the project­battleplans, grids, schedules

Would those three broad arenas fit everything on the list, or is there a fourth?

-- Circumstantial Town Meeting residue.

Which ones on that list are you particularly relating to that?

-- circuit rides, demonstration cadres, mini­town meetings. Some way of picking up on the Town Meeting designs and getting follow­up.

Would those four basically, initially hold the arenas of action that are here? We have symbolized radical task, basic design of the project, imaginal picture of the area and circumscribe town meeting residue.

Let's go through each one of these very quickly and name two programmatic activities for each, naming something that is concrete, but not as simple as "Hold a meeting." Symbolized radical task. What would be 2 programmatic activities that would be components of that?

-- some form of data interchange.

-- on January 1, launch the global campaign of 1936 metro cadre..

-- that is not the task. Metro Cadre is not the task. That activity is part of the design of

-- the project rather than the task.

Let's say for the moment that that is the case, and that we have one for each. Is there another programmatic activity that would hold symbolizing the radical task?

-- get out an edge song.

What about the basic design of the project? What would be programmatic activities?

-- January launch.

-- call it the third great campaign.

-- print some brochures about what a metro cadre does.

Imaginal picture of the area -- two programmatic activities there or one.

-- a grid with names on it.

What about the last one -- circumscribed Town Meeting residue? Just name one.

-- some sort of follow­up meeting scheme.

-- grid your key people from each Town Meeting.

All right. Now let's name two or three or four miracles .that would symbolize the launching of this system that we have briefly and roughly sketched out. Some of those that we lifted up as program activities almost begin to approach that. What would be miracles to get this thing off the ground? Very bold but concrete.

-- announce a Metro Cadre Launching song and play it over the radio.

-- demonstration circuit pulling off a Town Meeting.

-- sign yourself up for five different speaking engagements in different cities at the same

-- time -- then present the problem to whoever is around.

-- Movement Council builds a chart of names and dates for the circuits.

In terms of doing this program, this brief set of miracles, what sort of things would you need for this? What sort of authorization would be required? What would be your sources of authorization?

-- prominent grads would be included.

-- one willing person.

My next question is going to be sources of troops, so hold some of these. What kind of authorization do you need?

-- driver's license.

That's a well­framed project.

-- if you have a specific thing in mind like Town Meeting to do, you ought to have letters from influential people saying it is a good thing..

-- initial sponsorship of a meeting.

Where are your troop sources? Who would be the work force?

-- all existing grads.

-- guardians taking four­day weekends.

-- people in those metros.

-- everybody in the house.

What particular structures that exist at the moment would need to be catalyzed and brought into play in order to do this?

-- some accountability structures through area houses and centrums.

-- regional councils.

How would you pay for this?

-- get somebody else to take his car.

-- hitchhike.

-- live with various grads.

-- inkind cars.

Let's say for the moment that we are talking about a year to give some sort of construct. Anybody. If you are going to intuitively name 3 phases to this project, what would be your way of coming at it?

-- plan, demonstrate, implement.

-- groundwork, initial meetings, transferred leadership.

-- launch, replicate, intensify.

-- visitation, training and Primal Community Experiment (PCE)

We almost took too long to work all that through. We want to spend some time reflecting on what we have just done and also on what Indicative Battleplanning is. Let's talk about this thing that we do to prepare ourselves to get something done effectively.

We should distinguish here between procedures and method.

It may be a great thing to do some sort of swirl on a polar gestalt to get your contradictions or do a cross­gestalt somewhere to get your proposals or plot on a triangle to get something else, but to get that confused with what you are really doing is extremely hazardous. What you are out to do in the process of tactical thinking is to allow a person to think beyond anything he has ever thought before. What is that Chardin quote? "To shake off his ancient prejudices...!" That is the function of the gimmick, whether it is plotting data on a swirl or about leading a seminar over against that swirl. You are out to get him to get at his deepest intuitions, to shake off all the things he has been hanging onto relative to a particular arena you are discussing.

We want to focus not on the technique but on the method itself and assume that we have many ways of tricking people into using their intuitions and allowing something to happen in their lives. If you are going to name what we just did in this conversation on the Metro Cadre, how would you talk about that process? What did we do?

-- confirmed our intuitions.

-- released creativity directionally.

-- got a picture of the corporate mind that we are working with.

-- we made self conscious our intuitions relative to the Metro Cadre Network.

-- started with our basic covenant and moved into implementation.

-- exposed our imaginal blocks and articulated real practical solutions.

There is a kind of focusing that takes place in the process while you zero in. It seemed that that was going on. What else?

-- exposed our consensus.

-- we put concretion on being motivity.

I am going to ask a series of questions but do not intend to block anything that you have to say about this process of indicative battleplanning, and particularly, about how we get the process into our being, into our operating modes. What new insights about the process of battleplanning occurred to you?

-- if you go quickly enough and strategically enough you do not fall into bear traps; you get to the heart of the matter quickly.

Speed is an aid.

-- as a prior you never go into a situation without having your answers to the problem. In other words, you never rely naively on a brainstorm to do your thinking for you. You have already done it.

-- one thing I saw happening here was that we did not get committed at any point along the way; we were able to keep flowing with our thinking.

Come at this another way. How do you experience the problem of how you, in your own corporate situation, do your battleplanning in such a way that you are effective. How do you experience the problem of doing battleplanning? How do you sense that your houses experience the problem?

-- in the process we did not permit ourselves to stay in any one step. Right now, I find that I am dying to do that. Our tendency to do that is at the tactical level. I am still caught up in wanting a goal that will handle all this imaginally. I have to guard against desire and go back to my major contradictions. The insight behind that is that contradiction has to have a transrational form as complex as the tactical system. It is one contradiction but it is not a simple contradiction.

-- try to get somewhat dramatized that intuitive thinking is not shooting in the dark. For me, that comes particularly at the point of contradictions, and for me the struggle is how do you keep at it until you get that spark, get the motivity. When I am looking at contradictions, I am looking for that which would get me out on a metro trek. If it doesn't, anything after that is just crap.

Yes, you cannot underscore that too much. If you have done your swirl and gotten your contradictions and there is not an "Aha!" in the group you swirl it again. It is critical that the corporate "Aha!" be there at every point. There is something about grinding away to make sure you get every one of the 750 things that are on the board held together and get to the heart of the matter. The problem is taking all the data you have on the board and trying to zero in on each independently rather than get some picture of the whole.

-- what we did here was shoot for the heart of the matter and maybe some of the edge suggestions dropped out along the way. You are working through a creative adventure here rather than some kind of a drag that makes sure that every little unrelated issue gets held in the picture somehow or other.

-- one thing we need to do is allow people to see that this kind of planning can be done in a short period of time; it does not require three days. In leading the method, I find that you always have a propensity for thinking there is a right answer, instead of being sensitive to the fact that the only right answer is the answer that that group says yes to, whether it is the question of the contradiction or where to plot a proposal or anything. There is no universe or teleology that this method is adapting itself to. It is a dynamic universe that is being created as you go through the method.

-- when I get up to lead one of these, I have to understand that I have thought through the whole complexity, but that is one of the prejudices I have to drop when I am leaving. The reason for that is that I know that I can make a contradiction battleplan come out exactly the way I think it ought to, even with an unwilling group.

-- but if you do not push for getting the answers at each step articulated in such a way that it gives you handles on the other side of the step, to just take any answer and put it up can also lead you into radical abstraction.

It seems to me that battleplanning as a dynamic only takes place when you are at your wit's end. Your task is to keep yourself as well as the group at your wit's end.

-- how do we so internalize the method so that it becomes a part of our corporate brooding every day and not just a formal method that we sit down and do every two weeks? We often try to evaluate the event rather than the methods that brought off the event; at this time, it is probably more the evaluation of the method that throughout the quarter will make us more conscious of the ongoing process.

-- I noticed the need to keep the context straight as you go along is a very important aspect of the leader's job. The previous conclusions you came to provided the context for the next little bit of brainstorm.

-- keeping the corporate mind on the target is one of the problem areas.

-- the way of maintaining corporate lucidity was objectifying for the individuals his problems.

-- when do you decide to skip your tactical system and go directly miracles as we did in Majuro. How would you know when to do that? In Majuro they came up and they were afraid of a tactical system because the situation was so new to them that they decided to do a series of miracles. On the other side of that, those kinds of actualization create your tactical system.

That may be an insight for us in how we actually operate. We did create the tactical system, we did create a 5th City Model -- for me those are the same process -- and then we began to actualize the tactical system by doing the miracles. The intensity with which you actualize that is dependent upon the situation, and it determines the kind of miracles you do. You have the tactical system you intend to pull off. The new thing to me is a more indirect way of implementation. I have seen situations where you took each tactic, broke it down to four under each and had a timeline to implement them. This indirection seems to be a breakthrough in terms of miracles. But the tactical system is always sitting there. It seems to me that there is a need to be practical in terms of the proposals that guard the edge. Miracles have an intuitive dynamic to them that a tactical system goes not. You are still trying to feel after the key, still trying to organize the practical things. You seem to play the intuitive and the rational off against one another in terms of your own clarity.

-- the glitch comes most often for me at the proposal level. I do not have gimmicks there to get people to think strategically. Usually you get either a reiteration of practical vision which isn't too helpful because then it sounds like moralism, or you get tactics which do not give you an image of how you are moving strategically over against the contradictions you have. Just making a list does not necessarily break people loose. You need swirling and cross­gestalting and other kinds of gimmicks to get creative thinking on the contradictions. I feel a lack at the proposal step. And we seem less clear on integrating a bunch of proposals into a plan that has integrity, that has one thing rather than four.

-- you have movement programmatic decisions on one level. You set up a calendar ahead of time and then you do your battle plan. You already have faith in part of that calendar. There has to be something like what we did in the Local Church Experiment. You have committed yourself to some thing out of long range plans that come out of contradictions, but you have to ask the question, "What are the events which help to decide what miracles to bring off?"

-- there are five or six kinds of motivity that any human being has. I found the image of the car very enabling. It honored my creativity; I did not have to act like I was inventing what it meant to do a proposal. There are very specific creative steps underneath each of those types and there are images as well as gimmicks for each of those kinds of creativity. We ought to get out what we already do that works at each point.

-- how do you help a group to decide when it is time to go to the next step of battleplanning? Do we really have proposals here? contradictions here? I noticed that tonight we had to shove on pretty fast to get through it and actually we were a little shallow.

There are two things. One is you are looking for some sort of corporate "Aha!'' And the other is that you know that your contradictions or your proposals are not going to be that which you are finally willing to live with. I think to stop anywhere and say, "I will not move until these contradictions are so sharp," is another way of thinking that we are cutting over against. It is a tension between that and having some sort of an "Aha!" in the group that says that this is the right direction.

-- tonight as we went through this rapidly, I was not getting worried about those things. I sense that what was coming out was starting to be better at the end, but I did not worry much how I got there. I have found that when you push too hard on proposals, for instance, you start getting mixed up when you get to tactics. You start wondering about what level of tactics you have. You do not know whether you have tactics or miracles and it does not seem to make a whole lot of difference. Most of the energy has gone into worry.

-- if I have proposals that immediately set off a series of possibilities, I suspect that I am on the right track. If a proposal only gives you one alternative, then I begin to suspect that I have hit a dead end. My question is, "What kind of criteria like that do you use for contradiction other than the "Aha!"

-- the question which has surfaced for me this evening has to do with using the method in relation to a delimited arena of concern. I am very clear that this is a life method, a way of putting self­consciousness on what we do all the time. But I am not clear what happens to the method itself when you put it over against a delimited context. One of the reasons that I do not worry too much about the clarity or contradictions, or proposals is that I know we are dealing, with a large range of data; things will fall out, that which is soft will get harder as you go through the process. I have been wondering whether that happens when you say, "We are going to do our indicative battleplanning over against the production line issues of a company."

Probably our consensus is that it is possible to tell the difference between a body of people who are working out of something that is thought through, accurate and effective, and one that is not. We are on to something that is roughly right in terms of a body of people thinking itself through before acting. What is it for you now then? There is no right answer to this and certainly simply resolving to do indicative battleplanning next quarter does not count -- what for you are the keys to continue to build into our being the process of indicative battleplanning? (Simply resolving to do Indicative Battleplanning next quarter does not count.) What are the keys to breaking loose tactical thinking for us?

-- one of the things has to do with the frequency with which you do it. In the old system you did a massive, exhausting kind of a quarterly battleplan where you wore yourself out so much doing the thinking through that you never got around to implementing it. We need to look much more frequently at the contradictions, creative proposals, and so forth. Excitement, then, is created in the planning and being able to think tactically, and you are motivated to actually do the action.

-- most of what we have experienced this year is that our battleplan lasts for about 6 weeks and then either we have so much new data that it just looks ridiculous or we have already done it all. Maybe we need to do it every 6 weeks.

-- three things occurred to me tonight. The first was that we were forced to trust our intuitions by moving through. I think that sometimes what I have meant by saying that I want more clarity or more precision on the contradiction is that I want it so well said that obviously nothing could be done about it. So I do not feel clear yet because the contradiction has been stated intuitively and confirmationally. The second thing was that you begin by blocking the three traditional demons and you did that twice. They are the demons of the conserving principle in my life. The first one is my time, the second one is money, and the third one is troops. If you do not bracket those, then you build in a disbelief in your proposal to begin with. Then the third thing was the transrational nature of the whole thing, You are out to first of all reach that point of problemlessness. That is the sense that we can do this thing, whatever it is we have battleplanned. If you have not gotten to that point in about 30 minutes you will never get there. Then you are ready to ask the practical question, "How do we do the nitty­gritty little things that will bring it off?" After you have reached that point of problemlessness everybody is ready to do the nitty­gritty. You are ready to crawl on these circuits if you have reached that point of problemlessness.

-- now that you have mentioned that Indicative Battleplanning never starts with a problem. It does not solve problems. It takes issues and pushes them through. Trying to solve a problem through indicative battleplanning would probably mean that you had lost.

-- when we say that the visioning process is separate from the tactical thinking process we do not mean that there is another workshop we have to do, but that the tactical thinking has to be laid with spiritizing exercises and visioning lectures and methodological reflections. We rely on that whenever we do it, tonight and in LENS. We tried it in LENS without it and had a great workshop and came up with some great proposals. But we did not have enough courage to do anything. As a result, the process was criticized and the total results were nil. Visioning does not go on as a different workshop, but as something that goes through Indicative Battleplanning if we are going to have enough courage to face our own 'Aha! 's".

-- it has occurred to me that there are three different indirections in this process. The first one is a perceptual indirection. It is getting some kind of sideways or snake­eyes look at your situation which allows you to see it as the battlefield, allows you to see it as in terms of the objective to which you are committed and of the way the opposing forces or the odds are lined up against you. It is some way to get a clear picture for that situation, The second indirection is a strategic indirection. It has to do with knowing that you do not approach a contradiction directly. You come at it sideways, you go over it, around it, you unblock it. It is strategic indirection. a surprise approach. The third indirection is indirect implementation. This is the miracle concept. We have discovered that people can do a lot of tactics, if they have their eye on a miraculous happening. If all they have is a list of tactics they collapse after they have done two or three. It is not a shopping list that you are confronted with, but rather a great event that you can literally see as ­ significant to happen. Then you do implementaries like crazy.

-- miracles have to do with how it is that you explode your time and space. That intensifies your engagement and allows you to do your tactics.

-- something seems to have happened around the Movement. You get out there and you get bogged down or you collapse. What do you do? Do you just shuck it all or do you just go on and do the tasks that keep coming at you? I wonder if perhaps you go through the method through your proposals. Then you have your practical vision that you can work over against. If you get bogged down or if you get trapped in your tactics or if you do not have your miracles, you can go back and check with that and pick up new miracles to break yourself loose. In principle, if those proposals are done well they ought to last you at least a year. If you went through the whole process every six weeks you would get so distrusting yourself that you would not know what you said this time. That might be a way of picking ourselves back up and moving and having a constant check as we go through the years.

-- it would be helpful to get out the Fifth City Indicative Battleplan and then the recheck on it that we did last year. One thing that I find is that your interest is not in planning but in actuation. You get all wrapped up in planning and finessing of the planning. You try to turn your thinking into a rifle shot and you get gumbo very quickly. You are a revolutionary buck shot. That is like a farmer throwing out a handful of seed so that maybe five of those seeds come up. It is always having in mind you have the actuation, not finessing the plan

-- I think that one of the ways we could train ourselves to think this way would be to decide never to do any task, no matter how simple, without stating the contradiction which is being addressed. If you are clearing the table, you state the contradiction. You are always rehearsing it.

-- I find out in a lot of these things, that people already know this stuff. You get gumbo because you take what you know and you try to scramble your brains. We did a bank consult in Montreal, and we said, "Let's work on the contradictions." The first man said, "This bank has an operating story which is inadequate, and things have changed, so that it is no longer serving the needs of the people." That wiped out the whole workshop.

I think that it is true that that kind of swirling always leads you to some sort of abstraction. If you have nuts and bolts on the board, a very quick, straight­forward gestalt to me is far more helpful than some wild swirl. Deciding what gimmick you are going to use, in terms of what data you have got on your hands, is one very definite need.

-- one of the gimmicks we used was to do a 20­week plan every 13 weeks. That kept us fairly clean and it worked fairly well.

-- you begin with the indicative consensus. This evening it was that we are going to have a Metro Cadre Network.

You could go on with this discussion forever. Obviously, in one evening, we are not going to solve the problem of prayer, which is what we have been actually working on. That is before us.

-- Gary Tomlinson

8/2/75