You are Drawing it all Wrong - Process of Change and Layers of Resistance

Introduction

Well, actually, I am drawing it all wrong but I needed to get your attention! It was Howard Wetsman's presentation on TOC and addiction at the 2021 TOCICO Virtual Conference that got me to draw up the following.

You see, addiction to a particular substance is a positive response, an effect if you like, to an underlying cause. The cause of particular interest to Wetsman is poor dopamine "tone" (It's Not Just Drug Addiction.) Dopamine tone is a wrap-around term that encompasses all aspects of the quality and quantity of dopamine production, transmission, and reception (or not, as the case may be). He also delves into deeper psycho-social issues too. So, to my simplistic mind, addiction is a positive physiological response to an underlying physiological cause. To paraphrase the words of the band Pink Floyd; we become comfortably numb.

In a tip-of-the-hat to our own conception that we can either choose to manage the constraint or the constraint will manage us, I have chosen to frame this particular issue of addiction in a similar way: we must choose to manage the addiction or the addiction will manage us (and if you can wait one moment, I'll just go and pour another coffee).

In a separate four-part series (1, 2, 3, 4.) Wetsman also outlines to fellow addiction psychiatrists how he applied Theory of Constraints as a framework for his own studies of addiction. It was almost with a sense of embarrassment that I then hammered out the following.

This is Eli Goldratt's process of change from What is this thing called Theory of Constraints. We read the sequence as: (1) what to change, (2) what to change to, and (3) how to cause the change. Generally the first two are considered to be logical or logistical and the third is psychological. I don't believe that I have actually drawn that before, if you like, I always "knew it" but I never drew it.

The way it is drawn makes sense though. We move from undesirable effects in the present to desirable effects in the future. It looks like this.

Now as a saving grace, I did also draw this - about 10 or 11 years ago.

This is Goldratt's five layers of resistance. It made its first public appearance in a pamphlet entitled My Saga to improve production (1996). Here is the original verbalization.

(1)??Raising problems having one thing in common – it’s out of our hands.

(2)??Arguing that the proposed solution cannot possibly yield the desired outcome.

(3)??Arguing that the proposed solution will lead to negative effects.

(4)??Raising obstacles that will prevent the implementation.

(5)??Raising doubts about the collaboration of others

But there is a snag and it lies with the problem.

Where is the Problem Really?

You see, I tend to short-hand the problem into the effects in the lower-right, the undesirable effects, or the UDE's as we would say. But that is not where the problem is. This is where the problem is.

The problem is in the lower-left, or at least the problem cause is. We then see the symptomatic effects as negative outcomes in the lower-right. And Goldratt's point was that as long as we see each negative effect in isolation and ascribe (blame) it on someone or something else, we never dig back down deep enough to find the underlying cause. And when we do build that cause and effect through the use of groups and the current reality tree, we will always find the cause is in the lower-left. It can't be anywhere else.

Almost as an aside, if I look at what I did nearly 20 years ago I find (well it was never lost actually) that I parsed the first layer of resistance into two. It looks like this.

(1)??We don’t agree about the?extent?or?nature?of the problem.

(2)??We don’t agree about the?direction?or?completeness?of the solution.

(3)??We can see additional negative outcomes.

(4)??We can see real obstacles.

(5)??We doubt the collaboration of others.

We always look at the extent first, and the nature second. Putting it another way, it gave me the "outcomes" or the detail, and it gave me a "core" issue or the dynamics. Imagine the detail of a current reality tree or a future reality tree with the "branches" coming back to a central core. So nature equals core, and extent equals detail or the branches. Likewise, in the subsequent solution, direction equals core and completeness equals detail. I've never drawn this as a matrix but I think that you will find that it makes sense. Let's have a look.

Regardless of the language that we use, one thing should start to become clear. The cause of the problem is also our current solution!

Yep, our current solution is the cause of our current negative effects. Our problem is in our solution. It can't be any other way. Senge said it, Goldratt said it: today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions. That leads us to one inevitable conclusion.

The Mermaid is the Cause of our Problems

In TOC-jargon (which I am going to dip into here) the lower-left quadrant is called the mermaid. It is something that we are fond of and want to keep. But she is also the cause of our problems. So, should we dump her? Hell no! Let's see why.

The mermaid, the current solution of the lower-left quadrant has some overwhelming desirable effects (DE's) that have overcome some former limitation - that is why we are so fond of the mermaid. In time, however, such a solution might also give rise to some unexpected consequences, or undesirable effects (UDE's). Those are the symptomatic effects, the problems that we now see. We are very good at ignoring problems if they arise in another place, or at another time, or at a different logical level; say the firm rather than the department.

If we can accept the mermaid as the cause of the problem, or better still expect it and go in search of it, then we are half way to our solution. To skew the metaphor about the drunk looking for the coin under the lamp post, we should go looking for the lamp posts!

Effect-Cause-Effect

Goldratt liked to use the concept of effect-cause-effect. As a non-physicist I'm more economical and like to stick to cause-effect. But can you see that the small horizontal arrow leading from the lower-left quadrant to the lower-right quadrant must have cause at the tail propelling it forward if you like to the effect at the tip. Each and every arrow in that diagram is cause and effect. Let's draw it so that it is absolutely clear.

Now look at a quadrant. Each and every quadrant has a tip of an arrow leading into it; an effect, and a tail of an arrow leading out of it; a cause. Just take the lower-left quadrant as an example. The current solution is an effect of something else which now causes a new effect in the lower-right: effect-cause-effect.

Back to the story.

The New Solution

What is it that arises from the undesirable effects of the lower-right, what does this cause? It causes a new solution along with its desirable effects in the upper-left.

OK, nearly there. You can see from symmetry alone that the upper-right will or rather could contain new undesirable effects. We should draw this in too.

The undesirable effects, both real and imagined, are the reservations, obstacles, and fears of the potential implementation of the new solution. Let's expand that out a bit more. We have already done so in fact.

This is where we find our reservations, obstacles, and fears. We can't do the unintended consequences yet, because we need an abundance of hindsight for that, and currently we only have an absence of foresight - life is like that - and so it goes. But we shouldn't let these entities stop us. But sometimes they do. That last one especially: fear. It just slides us back down that left descending arrow to the bottom-left quadrant and we are back where we stated in the status quo along with all the desirable effects we covet from that position. We remain comfortably numb.

How do I Absolve Myself?

So with that said, I want to leave the five-step resistance to change as it is. Just like this.

But the process of change, I would draw slightly differently. More like this.

We need to change the old or current solution. We need to change it to the new solution. And how to cause the change had better work, or else we will take ourselves back to the start with the old or current solution once more.

Let's go back to the start with that addiction verbalization.

In this instance we need to change from the addiction managing us - with all the attendant negative ramification upon ourselves (and others) that we are at first woefully blind to, AND we need to change to us managing the addiction. In this instance we must understand the cause of the problem, be it physiological, or psycho-social, before we can even attempt, or rather ever attempt, to manage the addiction. And the same too for Theory of Constraints. [For all the people who bang-on ad nauseum about managing the constraint, very, very few actually understand why the constraint manages us - do you?]

Finally, as I like to say, the old solution and the new solution are not in opposition to one another. We need both.

We need the old desirable effects. In terms of that cliché, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we also do want to introduce new desirable effects that might not have existed before, and/or which will mitigate previously existing undesirable effects. And, of course, we would like to do so without introducing any new undesirable effects.

Summary

We have the tools to do this. I hope that switching over the "what to change" to the old solution in the lower-left quadrant, laying it at the feet (I mean the tail) of the mermaid so to speak, helps people to see how our positive intent, our former solution now causes us harm that we must address.

Addendum

There were a couple of responses from readers of the draft and associated correspondence. The easier question asked why the other quadrants are empty in this final diagram.

And the answer is that they aren't empty and forgive my shorthand for making it look so. Many of these things I solve graphically. To do that both heads of the diagonals point toward the future positive, which in-turn will become the present. Both tails of the diagonals point toward what will become the negative past. That is were we want the UDE's to be, in the past. Let's show this.

I've drawn them with strike-throughs and they will soon be in the past. There is method here. Rotating the descending arrow until it is ascending forces us to look at the language we use to express the conflict. And in doing that we are forced to look a the conflict itself, and in doing so we will resolve it.

The other comment was the "empty" quadrant in this expression.

If the lower-left is now what to change, then what, if anything, should be in the lower-right. That after all is where our problem effects are that we are trying to escape. The answer that came to me is as follows.

This quadrant contains the "why" we change. Think about that for a moment. The addicted for instance are blissfully happy before the issues start to catch up on their own physical and mental health (and even then they will be in denial). But long before that, the negative impacts upon others will be only too clear (to those others). Remember the addict doesn't see a problem, doesn't see a need to change. The why change is in a different place, different space, different people to themselves. But it is the why that is critically important in triggering the what to change. And the better that we understand the "what" the better we can work out the "what-to."