The first question posed, in the opening of this talk, was: How can the Value Analyst avoid succumbing to the very disease he is trying to correct: narrow vision, resistance to changes, rigidifying thinking, and the like. An answer is at least suggested in the two aspects of psychology we have discussed. the Value Analyst who is rigidifying may well be one of those persons who mistakes life without tension as more fun than life involved in the process of constantly taking on new problems. But there is more to the answer than that. He who rigidifies will be at the third, fourth, or fifth level, but not at the sixth, and the reason for the rigidification, the approach to it, and the possible resolution of the problem will vary depending on whether the rigidified person is a third, fourth, or fifth level human being. If he is at the third level, I suggest you forget him. Use him to the best that his rigidified Value Analytic self permits, but don’t hope too much for change. Normally, he who is living what is for him a satisfying third level existence is almost impossible to change. It would be like trying to change the political beliefs of an ardent John Birch society member. But the narrowly perceiving fourth and fifth level men are very different persons – they are readily open to change. The way to change the resisting fourth level man was well illustrated in the Bell and Gossett case reported to you by Barry at last year’s conference. I do not know if Barry is aware that intuitively he came by the psychological knowledge I have mentioned today, but certainly the Bell and Gossett situation illustrates magnificently how to induce change in resisting fourth level people.

You may recall Barry’s speech of last year. He spoke of the cold reception the Bell and Gossett engineering department gave to Value Engineering. He described the futility of his efforts, what a miserable experience it was, and told of how he, in a discussion with Hoeffner of the Worthington Corp., devised a plan which subsequently changed the whole atmosphere.

The plan he described requested the president of the company to positively and firmly lay down the law to Bell and Gossett people. The president defined the goal, laid down the rules, and then proceeded to use power to see to it they were achieved. The president, following Barry’s suggestion, put the people in a new but reducible state of tension. The very thing we have said man most enjoys, solving new problems. Barry showed you that when these new psychological principles were put into operation, albeit intuitively, that the people responded as the principles would predict. Or, in his own words: "All this changed the climate completely. We have at Bell and Gossett a working engineering cost reduction program." But let me offer a word of caution. As I read the report, Barry was a most fortunate man. He used fourth level methods to implement change in people who believed in the fourth level way of life. If he had tried the same on fifth level people, he would have been an unbelievable failure, and if such had been used on sixth level people, those sixth level people would long since have left Bell and Gossett for other organizations.

<< back  | 6 |  next >>