Consider for a moment that people are much like computers. It’s natural that they would be, after all, computers were fashioned by humans to automate many of the things that we used to only do manually. Of course computers can do many things now much faster than humans ever could. But computers have limitations too. Their performance is dependent on their software. If there are bugs in the software, you don’t get the output that you expect. If the software is outdated, productivity will be hampered. You wouldn’t consider running your company’s computers with a software operating system from the 1980’s or one that was filled with software bugs and always gave you flawed output. You would have the operating system debugged or upgraded as soon as possible, knowing that not doing so would cost the company massive losses in productivity.
Consider also that the people in your organization have their own kind of inner human software. This inner human software is made up of their intentions, attitudes, habits, beliefs, desires and aspirations. It is also made up of all of their human conditioning, education and training from infancy to the present day. Most people’s inner human software operating systems are still running programs filled with inner conflicts. The operating systems of your people’s inner human software are very likely to be totally outdated and filled with bugs that undermine performance and productivity.
Tom Stone Consulting has been researching deeply into the nature of human conditioning for many years. We have been discovering insights about exactly what holds our conditioning in place and what makes it so hard to get people to make positive changes in how they function. Up until now, getting people to fundamentally change has been difficult if not impossible. We all know because we have tried it and we know how hard it is for people to make real and lasting change in the basic ways that they operate!
The idea of upgrading someone’s “operating system” could sound like a fantasy. It’s something that you would hope to accomplish through training programs, but training is usually more analogous to installing new inner human application software. If the operating system is bugged then new application software is still going to give you output with fundamental flaws and limitations. It’s a little like putting wall paper over cracks in the wall. It covers up the cracks but you still have problems with the foundation that is causing the cracks. Papering over them doesn’t fix the foundation and it doesn’t make the cracks go away. Like this, providing training to people who are mainly the product of their conditioned responses makes it difficult for the training to be optimally utilized. This is because the person’s foundation of conditioning tends to dominate their decisions and behavior and override most of the value of the training. The training is “papering over the cracks.” |