How I approach this task of planning for my craftsman’s absence will have a major impact on how I manage my body and production staff. That which is essential (the financial viability of this company and the quality of the finished product) will provide important guidance and stability (statics) as adjustments are made and remade at all levels (dynamics) under the conditions of Polystasis.
Shifting Templates
The key point is that the baseline itself is likely to repeatedly change when Polystasis is operating in a shifting (dancing) environment with changing somatic and psychosocial templates constantly at play. This change might involve quantity (raising or lowering the baseline) or quality (shifting to a different baseline). We remain vigilant regarding real and imagined lions.
Our templates are fully available to us—even if we remain unaware of their powerful presence. We weigh the costs and benefits of changing environmental conditions (such as an open window in Winter). Our priorities are considered. Do we want fresh air, or do we want to reduce the cost of heating in our home? We determine that reduced costs are essential. As a result, we not only keep the window closed but also reduce the thermostat to 66 degrees and put on a sweater.
Our body (somatic template) predicts and anticipates this change. Adjustments are made that enable us to live in a cooler environment. The baseline has changed. A new level of homeostasis might be established with a change in the thermostat, but this is a secondary adjustment. Settings on the thermostat will (or may) remain in place until the Spring, while the clothes we wear and the windows that we open will make a bigger, more immediate difference. We can do a better job of meeting our goal of reducing heating costs by wearing a sweater or closing the window than by moving the thermostat up a notch.
We alter our ways of adjusting to (and buffering) the impact of shifting conditions (as noted by our deviant psychosocial template). Our craftsman reports in sick. We can do nothing and hope for the quick recovery of our craftsman. Perhaps we recommend that he visit a doctor or consume some chicken soup. We might wishfully anticipate his rapid recovery or the healing power of chicken soup. Our errant prediction, in this case, might put us in jeopardy of making wrong decisions and failing to adjust production schedules or change production priorities.
Alternatively (Peter Sterling’s Allo), we can anticipate (predict)and plan immediate (proximal) changes in the schedule and priorities. We can anticipate a need to meet financial quotas by altering our promotion of chairs in a specific price range. We remain keenly aware of what is occurring on the production line (Test). We change our production plans if this is necessary (Operate), see if this alteration is working (Test), and then turn our attention away from the production live (Exit). We have scheduled a meeting with the head of marketing regarding potential changes in promotional priorities.
Self-Fulfilling prophecy
One other feature in my psychology of anticipation is introduced. It is a process called Self-fulfilling Prophecy that was made famous in educational circles by the work of Robert Rosenthal (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 2003). As Rosenthal observed, teachers are likely to achieve their expectations of the students with whom they are working. If a student is “expected” to be brilliant (even if this is not a valid expectation) then they will perform better than if they are expected to be poor performers.
This same process has been applied by Argyris and Schön (1974) to the way, more generally, we interact with other people. The way in which we expect another person to react to our own behavior is likely to be “self-fulfilling”. If we expect the other person to be defensive, then our own hesitant and guarded interaction with this “defensive” person is likely make them actually defensive, given how they interpret our behavior.
