Introduction by Ray Newkirk

Fifty years have passed since I first proposed the concepts behind these next few pages.  You may find the story of how these pages eventually emerged an interesting one.  They were, after all, 50 years in the making.  The story begins with the realization that people are naturally motivated to do things themselves. 

People like to do things the way they want, when they want. While many people appear indifferent about so much in life, they actually prefer to do things themselves, especially the lazy ones among us. Even when help is freely available, people prefer minimal assistance from others.  No matter what, people rather not hire an expert, even as a last resort.  Even when all hope seems lost, people still prefer to do things on their own.  At the very least, people like to feel that they are doing things their own way, even when they are not.  Even when it seems reckless, people do not prefer help.  Just think about it, help is such a weak word.  People like their professional independence, especially in the workplace. Rarely do they like to share credit with workmates, even when a team effort was so apparent to everyone. Autonomy is the name of the game.  Only one person gets to sit at the top.  Years flew by before I finally began to learn this bit of counter-intuitive wisdom.

The Applied Intuitive Solutions™ (AIS™) reverses the course of the last 50 years by returning the control of the situation to the person who wants to do it without help.  If autonomy is the name of the game, the AIS™ can get you there safely.  As an AIS™ Platform Resident, you can learn to do it yourself.  I designed the AIS™ to return control of the situation to you.

I designed the AIS™ environment to bring a world of brilliance to you On-Demand.  Our Platform may not be where we want it to be. Not yet, but that day is quickly approaching.  This document introduces a new Natural Programming Language that exists to enable you to resolve most of the problems that you will run up against in the workplace. The beauty of the AIS™ is that it enables you to think clearly for yourself about the actions you may need to execute to rapidly remove the messy obstacles that impede your road to success.  As an AIS™ Resident, you seamlessly become the consultant you previously depended on to solve the nagging problems that reduce the productivity of your organization.  Professional independence, self-reliance, autonomy, workplace mastery, and productivity, the AIS™ Platform is your gateway.

Become Familiar with the Unfamiliar.  Become an AIS™ Platform Resident.

If I tell you that the scalding water is cold and I get 50 other people to agree with me does that mean that the scalding hot water is now cold? In other words, is Truth merely a collective agreement of a multitude of people? This is a tough one. We should ask Wittgenstein. —RLN

The Taxonomy of the Applied Intuitive Solution™

The Taxonomy consists of five levels:

• Category: C-Level Solution in the Enterprise

• AIS™Group: Executive Level Solution in the Business Process

• AIS™ Management Level Solution Related to Variance of Problem Context that Impacts the Action Steps Required to Solve the Problem.

• Activity: Key Actions Executed When Solving a Problem.

• Task: Lowest Level of Detail for an Action Step that Often Varies by Industry.

Taxonomy of the ABSL™ Continued

The ABSL™ binds the Platform, Problem, and Resident (end-users) with solutions, as sources of knowledge, across extended geographic regions that may span the entire globe. Providing a common language for problem solving, the ABSL™ enables the AIS™ environment to rapidly connect problem-solvers with a solutions architecture that integrates information and processing resources, specialized  libraries, mobile devices,  and knowledge bases using optimized procedures and processes.  In this way, the AIS™ Platform delivers a portfolio of potent solutions that can be accessed by nearly everyone to rapidly discover how to resolve many of their most pressing challenges.

Through the ABSL™ the AIS™ Platform binds problems to solutions using a effectiveness- based, learning architecture as a foundation to build the core abilities of knowledge analysis, knowledge synthesis, knowledge application, judgment and valuation through intellectual and skills development to improve effectiveness.  While technology and experience provide the foundation of the AIS™ Platform, knowledge acquisition and skills development become the bases of effectiveness.

•Effectiveness

•Judgment •Valuation

•Knowledge Analysis Knowledge Synthesis Knowledge Application

Syntax of the AIS™

The AIS™ environment exists to rapidly close the “Problem-to-Solution Gap” in real time.  It does this through a Common Problem Solving Language called ABSL™, or Action Based Solution Language™.  Using the Natural Programming Language of ABSL™, people access the SIVS™ and enter a command prompt such as “Build the confidence of my team” in the solution query function. The SIVS™ rapidly returns an action plan consisting of from one to seven action steps that when followed assist the Platform Resident (end-user) with resolving the problem previously entered in the solution query function.  In this way, the AIS™ environment serves as an Internet Assistant Action Learning™ (IAAL™) Program.  The IAAL™ can assist Platform Residents with identifying the real versus apparent problem prior to entering it in the solution query space.

Social Cognition and the AIS™ Platform

The AIS™ Platform is a Cognitive Platform that provides Natural Language Problem Solving for Human Action.  It rapidly binds Problem and Problem-Solver to a solution to form a “cognitive set” that eliminates the challenges facing the Problem-Solver, the end-user as a Resident of the AIS™ Platform.  Leveraging knowledge, facts, and successful solutions of previous experience, the Platform uses the Action Based Solution Language™ to deliver brief but potent solutions of demonstrated viability. 

The AIS™ Platform rests on the Cognitive Principle that successful outcomes require the knowledge, facts, and wisdom validated through experience. Problem-Solvers require tried and true approaches to arrive at workable solutions that are “good enough”. In critical situations, uncertainty and failure are not an option.  Success is the best revenge in a problem plagued environment.

The AIS™ Platform enables Residents to become familiar with the unfamiliar.  While theories and discoveries in Social Cognition influence the design of the iSOD™ Platform, the Theory of Regulatory Fit occupies a central place in the development of the AIS™ architecture.  In this Theory, we quickly recognized that the ABSL™ had to achieve substantial regulatory fit with an end-user’s regulatory orientation in building an effective AIS™ environment. We came to understand that regulatory fit delivers several critical capacities.  For example, regulatory fit:

• Increases Platform Resident’s strength of motivation;

• Inclines Platform Resident’s toward distinct means for goals attainment;

• Encourages Platform Resident’s to evaluate their decisions and goal pursuits more positively;

• Inclines Platform Resident’s to imagine feeling better about a good choice and feeling worse about a bad choice, and

• Encourages Platform Resident’s to assign value to the object of a decision.

“When people use goal pursuit means that fit their regulatory orientation, they feel alert and energized, they feel good about what they have done.

Regulatory fit adds value to a person’s life.”

E. Troy Higgins

Regulatory Fit and the AIS™ Platform

We designed our AIS™ architecture to enable Platform Residents to experience a regulatory fit with their regulatory orientation when using our AIS™ as a component of their goal pursuit means - either eagerness means or vigilance means.  Whenever our AIS™ achieve substantial regulatory fit with their regulatory orientation, either promotion focused or prevention-focused, Platform Residents are encouraged to more positively evaluate their problem solving actions.

We understand that people pursue either promotion-focus concerns or prevention-focus concerns.  We designed our AIS™ environment to fit both of these concerns and to be compatible with the variable goal pursuit means engaged in by people in organization who desperately want to find rapid solutions to their pressing problems, either the eagerness means of promotion-focused concerns or the vigilance means of the prevention-focused means.  One may derive from research into regulatory fit that Platform Residents who use our AIS™ as goal pursuit means that fit their regulatory orientation will become more alert, full of energy, and feel good about what they have done in solving their problem.  Since value from fit positively impacts the quality of life, the AIS™ Platform adds value to the Platform Resident’s life as long as our AIS™ environment enables Resident’s to experience regulatory fit.

Social Cognition, especially in the areas of promotion and prevention goal pursuit, directly informs the design of our AIS™ Platform. Research in Social Cognition, reveals that Platform Resident’s:

• Are more inclined towards successfully solving their pressing workplace problems if the AIS™ has higher regulatory fit.

• Motivation during problem-solving, as a goal pursuit, is stronger when regulatory fit is higher.

• Prospective feelings about a problem-solving choice they might make are more positive for a desirable choice and more negative for an undesirable choice when regulatory fit is higher.

• Retrospective evaluations of past decisions or goal pursuits are more positive when regulatory fit is higher.

• Assign higher value to an object that is chosen with higher regulatory fit.

Bases of Effectiveness

Agreeing with the findings the Corporate-Higher Education Forum, we maintain that for too long now, colleges and private training organizations have neglected workplace skills.  Since we seek to develop personal and group effectiveness to improve workplace productivity, we deliver AIS™ that focus on building problem solving skills in four core areas of work-skills specialization. Together these form the bases of effectiveness as illustrated below:

•Mobilizing Innovation & Change Managing Tasks & Others

•Effectiveness

•Managing Self Communicating Well

Core Environment of Effectiveness 

Effective people enjoy advanced problem-solving abilities. They also enjoy a wide range of theoretical and practical knowledge. From this foundation, individuals exercise the ability to better analyze, synthesize, and apply new solutions using judgment and critical evaluation skills.  This environment of abilities forms the core environment of effectiveness.  It consists of the following three components which, along with the bases of effectiveness, form the infrastructure of human competence: 

• Foundation, consisting of advanced problem solving abilities and knowledge; 

• Advanced communication ability consisting of reading, writing, reasoning, planning, speaking, organizing, leading, listening, and following;

• Knowledge consisting of theories, facts, information, methods, ideas, liberal and career knowledge;

• Framework, consisting of intellectual and skills development to improve productivity, and

• Abilities, consisting of the ability to analyze, synthesize, and apply knowledge, and the ability to judge or value.

AIS™ Numbering Scheme

Each AIS™ carries an alphanumeric prefix consisting of a Category, Solution, and Action Step identifier such as CAT000 and CAT007 where the CAT identifies the category, the 007 identifies the solution and the CAT007.1 action step. 

Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking characterizes the AIS™ Platform.  The AIS™ environment has a concern for the whole problem rather than a component of the problem.  The AIS™ Platform implements three seminal systems concepts: (1) transformation; (2) expansion, and (3) counter-intuition.

Our AIS™Platform delivers solutions that integrate maintenance learning with adaptability learning to encourage evolutionary problem solving. Evolutionary problem solving is the hallmark of the effective person.

Design Inquiry

Design Inquiry is the methodology of AIS™ design.  Following Banathy (1986), we engage it to inquire into the design of methodologies used in our AIS™ design by exploring the:

1. Characteristics of the design problem;

2. Competence of the designers, and

3. Capacity of the teams that initiate design. 

 “The way the information is learned will determine

how, why, and when it is used.” 

                Ellen J. Langer

Model of Skills Acquisition Process

AIS™ Platform  is a problem-solving platform and  a skills acquisition environment. We focus on the problem and deliver solutions to build workplace productivity. We actively research the problem-solving process and regularly incorporate new discoveries and insights.  Solution-binding is central to the AIS™ missing. With Anderson (1980), we see solution acquisition as consisting of three cycles:

• Cognitive

• Associative

• Autonomous. 

Within the cognitive cycle, problem-solvers capture skill-based solutions to resolve a problem.  Within the associative cycle, problem-solvers employ solutions to build productivity and engage the problem-solving skill set. In the autonomous, problem-solvers engage an unending cycle of self-mastery and effectiveness improvement. We designed the AIS™ Platform to facilitate the cycle of solution acquisition.

•Solution Acquisition Process

•Cognitive Cycle Associative Cycle Autonomous Cycle

Learning by Design Inquiry

The design inquiry approach to AIS™ development suggests a disciplined approach to inquiry that generates mindfulness, or mindful learning.  As a systems approach, design inquiry is characterized by:

• An openness to new information;

• Continuous generation of new categories, and

• Encouragement of multiple perspectives, the three formative characteristics of mindful learning identified by Langer (1997).

•Fundamental Characteristics of Design Inquiry

•Openness to New Information

• Continuous Generation to New Categories Encouragement of Multiple Perspectives

During Design inquiry, the actor and observer is the same person.  Design inquiry engages the observer to continually seek new information, build upon multiple perspectives, and continually engage multiple environments to generate new categories of description through iterative and spiralic cycles of feedback and feedforward, divergence, and convergence, multi-systemic thrust, and participative design.

Solving problems using the design inquiry approach provides several advantages over other methods of problem solving.  Not only does Design Inquiry clarify the role of manager as facilitator, mediator, supporter, or skill coach, but it enables employees to:

1. Interconnect AIS™ with work to solve challenging problems and master critical skills;

2. Enhance team oriented relationships by improving behaviors

3. Resolve authentic and meaningful work related challenges;

4. Go public with improved skills by applying rapid solutions in workplace settings;

5. Better reflect on new solutions as learning content to obtain essential skills building knowledge;

6. Reflect on the level of workplace skills and the need for improvement;

7. Develop a more informed understanding of the role of quality in effectiveness;

8. Target solutions to a specific personal or professional skill need, and

9. Take ownership in work performance while applying new solutions to build new skills.

Evolutionary Guidance Systems

Banathy (1989) described evolutionary guidance “as a dynamic process of giving direction to the evolution of human systems,” (p, 291). Through the AIS™ Platform, evolutionary guidance develops in organizations various capacities and capabilities which recreate and empower workplace relationships as Evolutionary Guidance Systems, or EGS, consisting of at least 13 dimensions of relationship:

1. Social Action

2. Economic

3. Moral

4. Wellness

5. Educational

6. Scientific

7. Technological

8. Aesthetic

9. Political

10. Ethics

11. Leadership

12. Management

13. Executive

Appreciative Human Activity Systems 

Evolutionary Guidance Systems share many of the attributes of Appreciative Systems.  Sir Geoffrey Vickers (1983) described an Appreciative System as a dynamic, personal, and social work-of-art characterized by three defining attributes:

• Corresponds with reality enough to guide action;

• Shared enough by others to mediate communications, and

• Becomes acceptable by ourselves to make life bearable. 

Peter Checkland (1986) views Appreciative Systems as interacting processes of continuous ideas and events which continually unfold.  Appreciative Systems transcend themselves by critically reflecting on their past.

Defining Attributes of Appreciative Systems

• Corresponds with Reality Enough to Guide Action

• Shared Enough by Others to Mediate Communications

• Become Acceptable by Ourselves to Make Life Bearable

Appreciative Human Activity Systems 

Evolutionary Guidance Systems share many of the attributes of Appreciative Systems.  Sir Geoffrey Vickers (1983) described an Appreciative System as a dynamic, personal, and social work-of-art characterized by three defining attributes:

• Corresponds with reality enough to guide action;

• Shared enough by others to mediate communications, and

• Becomes acceptable by ourselves to make life bearable. 

Peter Checkland (1986) views Appreciative Systems as interacting processes of continuous ideas and events which continually unfold.  Appreciative Systems transcend themselves by critically reflecting on their past.

Defining Attributes of Appreciative Systems

• Corresponds with Reality Enough to Guide Action

• Shared Enough by Others to Mediate Communications

• Become Acceptable by Ourselves to Make Life Bearable

As an Appreciative System, the Evolutionary Guidance Systems, or EGS, enjoys four central traits:

• Holistic view of organizations as they co-evolve with the environment;

• Value of the appreciation of individuals and local communities as an ethical foundation;

• Social network of co-operative learning, and

• Ecological axioms of strategic, tactical, and operational significance. 

For the individual, the Appreciative EGS, advocates:

• Self-awareness and self-management;

• Respect for elected relationships;

• Associative level of work and career relationships, and

• Obligation of involvement as a world citizen. 

Senior executives and other leaders employ the Appreciative EGS model to inspire, shape, and share the internal values of the corporate culture.

Four Core Traits of the Evolutioary Guidance System

• Holistic View of Organizations as They Co-eveolve with the Environment

• Value of the Appreciation of Individuals and Local Communities as an Ethical Foundation

• Social Network of Co-operative Problem Solving

• Ecological Axioms of Strategic, Tactical, and Operational Significance

Principles of Mindful Learning

Informed by the principles of Mindful Learning (Langer , 1999) and to guide the design of our knowledge transfer, we seek to design AIS™ which enable Platform Residents to accomplish the following:

• Decrease the rigid reliance on old categories;

• Improve control over context;

• Expand the range of control;

• Broaden self-image;

• Eliminate learned helplessness;

• Overcome stunted potential;

• Reduce workplace cruelty, and

• Improve the problem solving process to obtain expected outcomes.  

We designed the AIS™ environment to provide Platform Residents with a thorough grounding in several categories of problem solving as illustrated below:

Experiential Problem Solving that leads to—Collaborative Problem Solving that leads to——Performance-Based Problem Solving that leads to——Problem Based  Problem Solving that leads to——•Evolutionary Problem Solving that leads to——Experiential Problem Solving that leads to…….

Super Intelligent Virtual System™ (SIVS™) Categories of Problem Solving