The principles of NLP are equally applicable in assisting business executives to reorganize their priorities and generate new options; in helping scientists and engineers get the most from their research and upgrade their teaching ability; in showing educators new and remarkably effective educational system design principles; in extending to lawyers and judges features of communication that greatly facilitate settlements; in aiding therapists to more effectively and quickly aid their clients. NLP is for people interested in getting things done and enjoying themselves in the process.

An important aspect of NLP is its versatility. Its methods of pattern identification and sequencing may be generalized from individual human beings to larger order systems, from contexts involving remedial change (problem solving) to those involving . evolutionary change (extending the domain of decision variables beyond the present state for an individual or system now functioning effectively). NLP may be applied as profitably to the internal organization of a bureaucratic hierarchy as to the representational systems of an individual. In all cases the formal sequencing and scheduling of activity between the structural components of a system will determine the possible outcomes of that system and the effectiveness of that system in securing those outcomes.

In an organization, its departments or employees take the place of representational systems within a single human being. Each is responsible for a certain set of inputs, processing and outputs that contribute to one or more other sets of inputs, processing and outputs of the other members of the system and of that system as a whole. By understanding the functional characteristics of the components (employees, departments, sections, divisions, etc.) of an organization and the desired outcomes of that organization, the neurolinguistic programmer can assist in sequencing or rese–quencing the interactions between components to achieve the desired outcome in the most elegant and effective manner.

1.8 Synesthesia

The existence of the ordered sequences of representation that we call strategies presupposes interconnected networks of activity at the neurological level. Crossover connections between representational system complexes, such that the activity in one representational system initiates activity in another system called synesthesia in NLP.

Hearing a harsh tone of voice and feeling uncomfortable is an example of auditory–kinesthetic synesthesia. Seeing blood and feeling nauseous would be a visual–kinesthetic synesthesia. Feeling angry and blaming someone verbally inside your head would be a kinesthetic–auditory synesthesia. Hearing music and imagining a beautiful scene would constitute an auditory–visual synesthesia.

Synesthesia patterns constitute a large portion of the human meaning making process. Correlations between representational system activities are at the root of such complex processes as knowledge, choice and communication. The skills and abilities that humans develop in all areas, fields and disciplines are the direct result of the establishment of crossover connections between neural representational complexes. The major differences among individuals possessing different skills, talents and abilities are derived from the synesthesia correlations within their particular domains of experience.

By making these correlative patterns explicit, neurolinguistic programming provides a working model, an applied technology for the strategic utilization of correlative patterns to secure any behavioral outcome. By identifying synesthetic sequences that lead to specific outcomes and by making them available to those who desire to achieve those outcomes we can, in essence, replicate any behavior — whether that of a businessman, scientist, healer, athlete, musician or anyone that does something well. With the tools provided by NLP, we believe anyone can be transformed into a modern "renaissance" person.

II: STRATEGIES

All of our overt behavior is controlled by internal processing strategies. Each of you has a particular set of strategies for motivating yourself out of bed in the morning, for delegating job responsibilities to employees, for learning and teaching, for conducting business negotiations, and so on. Yet our cultural models do not explicitly teach us the specifics of the strategies that are required to achieve the behavioral goals expressed or implied by each model. Until the advent of neurolinguistic programming this has been left almost exclusively to personal trial and error.

We may succeed magnificently with particular strategies (making money, for example), yet fail completely with others (personal relationships, for example). What, precisely, is it about strategies that generates successful outcomes in some instances and disastrous outcomes in other instances? By applying the techniques and procedures developed and described in NLP, individuals in many walks of life and professionals in many fields have learned to modify existing strategies or to create new ones for themselves and their associates to achieve exactly the outcomes they desire. The magic of success is a matter of employing the most effective strategies. Most strategies can be easily learned or modified to accomplish goals of our own choosing.

2. TOTEs and Strategies

The basic format we will use to describe a specific sequence of behavior is the TOTE (Test–Operate–Test–Exit), a model proposed by George Miller, Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram in their book Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960). A TOTE is essentially a sequence of activities in our sensory representational systems that has become consolidated into a functional unit of behavior such that it is typically executed below the threshold of consciousness (see Patterns II). As an example, a handshake for adults in western cultures is a single unit of behavior that often has the status of a TOTE.

The behavioral sequence that makes up a TOTE can range from the simple to the complex. For the beginning musician, the playing of a single note may be the largest chunk of behavior that he or she can handle. As the musician's skill increases, however, the performance of an entire scale or melody may be comfortably undertaken as a single unit of behavior — a complex sequence of activities that has become incorporated as a TOTE.

In our experience, the advantages of TOTE over other models for analyzing behavioral units are its elegance (it requires the fewest distinctions) and its incorporation of the important properties of feedback and outcome. Developed by Miller, Galanter and Pribram as an extension of the "reflex arc" (the stimulus–response concept) in behaviorist theory, the TOTE model retains the basic simplicity of its predecessor but far surpasses it in usefulness as a neurological model of the formal internal processing sequence triggered by a stimulus. That is, it extends the "reflex arc" model to include a feedback operation as an intermediate activity between the stimulus and the response. As Miller, Galanter and Pribram explain:

"The test represents the conditions that have to be met before the response will occur." (p. 24)

If the conditions of the test phase (a comparison of present state and desired state) are met, the action initiated by the stimulus exits to the next step in the chain of behavior. If not, there is a feedback phase in which the system operates to change some aspect of the stimulus or of the organism's internal state in an attempt to satisfy the test once again. The test–operate feedback loop may recycle many times before the test is passed and the action exists.* Miller, Galanter and Pribram write: