While this is just one example of the way Andrew Kay approached his business, it illustrates the way in which he envisioned moving from traditional assumptions about the operation of a production line to a new set of humanistic (eupsychian) assumptions. Given that these new assumptions had not been widely tested and were primarily presented in management textbooks, there was an initial void of knowledge that Kay had to confront. There was virtually “nothing” known about this self-management process really worked at the time Andy Kay was starting his business. Aspirational Hope was required to bring realization out of nothingness.
It is interesting to note that Andrew Kay never abandoned his Hopes and dreams. Though Nonlinear Systems eventually went bankrupt with the emerging competition in the desktop computer business of IBM (and eventually Apple), Andy Kay eventually founded another company that produces new versions of the personal Kaypro computer. He was in his early 70s—and still filling his head and heart with Hope.
Challenge, Support and Flow
Returning to the dynamics operating in the emergence of Hope, I propose a third dynamic. It concerns appropriate levels of challenge and support. If we are faced with too great a challenge, then the condition is hopeless. Conversely, if we are faced with too small a challenge, then there is no need for hope. We don’t have to spend our time hoping; rather, we should spend our time getting on with the task of meeting this challenge. There is also the matter of support. Not only must there be a moderate, manageable level of challenge for us to be hopeful; an appropriate level of support must also be available. We can be hopeful because we know (or at least believe) that we are sufficiently knowledgeable and skillful and there are adequate resources available to meet the challenge.
As Frank Goble (1970, p. 60) notes in referencing the work of Abraham Maslow, human growth is “benefited by challenge only if the challenge does not exceed . . . human limits. In his work with graduate students at Brandise University, Maslow discovered what he called the continental-divide principle.” The significant challenge of graduate work either led to growth or to failure (they are broken). For the already healthy individual with sufficient support, “stress and challenge were growth -producing.” However, for the insecure, weak individuals without sufficient support, the challenge of graduate studies “was not the answer” (Goble, 1970, p. 60). Another humanistically-oriented psychologist, Nevitt Sanford (1980), similarly concluded that challenges must be matched with sufficient support if significant learning is to occur for everyone, not just graduate students.
The balance between challenge and support might also be critical to another important condition that is identified by Mihali Csiksentmihali, who joined with Martin Seligman in heralding the 21st century emergence of positive psychology. For Csikszentmihalyi (1975), there is a threshold between boredom (too much support and not enough challenge) and anxiety (too much challenge and not enough support) where the condition of “Flow” takes place.
