Some people have tests in their strategies which require them to insure that every representation in the steps of their strategy reaches the signal value necessary for consciousness. Requiring such high signals may be adaptive in some cases, but too often tends to slow the process down because the individual has to keep operating to increase the signal value.
Other people, however, distract themselves consciously to insure that the strategy will take place at the unconscious level. Consider, for instance, the following strategy of a skilled mathematician. This man regularly displayed an unusual skill in adding tremendous columns of numbers rapidly and without error. When asked how he was able to perform such feats the mathematician replied that he didn't have to do anything. He maintained that all he did was to make an internal image of a blackboard, and after a series of numbers was presented to him, he merely watched the blackboard in his mind's eye until a hand came into the picture and wrote down the answer. He would then simply read the answer on the blackboard.
All of this is not to say that the internal activity indicated by the property of consciousness is not important in the learning process. A high signal value in a particular representational system is in most cases very important for the initial establishment of that step in the strategy. Once the pattern is established, however, it helps to streamline the strategy if the signal habituates. Once one has learned to ride a bicycle, for example, it is a hindrance rather than a help to continue consciously attending to balance, steering, pedaling, etc.
2.9 Unpacking Unconscious Strategies.
In a TOTE that has already habituated, like the mathematician's strategy mentioned above, the fact that the signal level of the various steps is below consciousness makes it difficult for the individual to consciously communicate these steps to someone else who wishes to acquire the skill. It also becomes hard to change the various steps of a particular unconscious strategy, should it become maladaptive at some point, because the details of the steps are not explicitly known. One of the most important tasks that a neurolinguistic programmer faces is how to make unconscious strategies explicit when the individual who displays them is unable to consciously report the steps to another. This is where close observation of the accessing cues used by an individual to tune in to specific representational systems will become extremely useful. The next section of this book will be devoted to presenting explicit means with which to unpack unconscious strategies.
This skill of making unconscious strategies explicit gives the programmer access to the most effective and appropriate strategies for the specific outcomes that an individual or organization desires.
2.10 The Formal Power of Strategies.
Strategies are purely formal structures completely independent of content. The strategy identifies only the class of experience in which the representation takes place and the sequential relationship each representation has to others in the same strategy. In most cases the content of particular representations within the strategy will only determine the specifics of the outcome; it is the form of the strategy that will determine which outcome is achieved and how efficiently and effectively that outcome is obtained.
People often confuse "experience" with competence — that is, it is thought that the more time someone spends practicing or doing a particular task determines how well the person is able to perform the task. If we consider the two spelling strategies discussed in the previous chapter, however, it becomes evident that the strategy used plays a much more important role than the amount of time invested. We have come across thousands of Americans who have been spelling words almost daily for thirty years and more who, because they spell auditorily by sounding words out, consistently make the same recurrent errors in their spelling, and who spell much worse than a child with a visual strategy who has been spelling for less than five years.
Because strategies are purely formal an individual may use the same decision making strategy that she uses to select an entre from a menu to decide what kind of house to buy, how to discipline her child and who to vote for in the next election. That is, she may employ the same sequence of representational systems for test and operate procedures to make any kind of decision; only the content changes.
The same will be true of strategies for learning and motivation. A banker may employ the same motivation strategy he uses to get out of bed in the morning to become motivated to buy a particular kind of car, invest a sum of money, change his lifestyle or get out of the hospital. Once the programmer elicits the individual's motivation strategy for one particular situation, s/he may run any content experience through this strategy and end up with the appropriate outcome, that the individual will be motivated for the particular content experience specified.
The neurolinguistic programmer may utilize any strategy in this way to help the client access resources for the specific outcome that s/he desires. The strategies we have found to be the most useful and generative in our work are those for learning, motivation, creativity, belief (also called the convincer strategy), decision making and remembering. We have found that this small battery of strategies includes most of the basic operations for accessing resources needed to achieve an outcome, no matter what the particular content of the situation is.
Each of these strategies will also be important to anyone wishing to organize a group or organization of individuals to work as an efficient, harmonious and functional system. Every political, industrial, legal, economic or domestic system is composed of a number of individuals. The development, operation, efficiency and usefulness of the system will depend on how each individual's strategies for decision making, motivation, belief, etc., interrelate with those of other individuals in the system to contribute to the outcomes and goals of the system as a whole. Having the tools with which to guide and assist individuals to learn, make decisions, motivate themselves, create and so on, one can greatly increase the potentials of any system and of one's own potentials within that system.
The tools and methods for utilizing strategies effectively will be presented as we move through the remaining sections of this book.
III. ELICITATION
At a dinner party, the question, "How do you make such a delicious chicken cacciatore?" will elicit from the culinary artist of the house a precise sequence of steps — a specific strategy — for securing the outcome of a "delicious chicken cacciatore." If you miss part of the strategy (leave out a spice) or reverse two of its steps, it is most unlikely that you will later be able to achieve that particular gustatory outcome. Leaving out what generates the "m–m–m–mmm" response can result in an "ugh" response, a culinary disaster. On the other hand, once you've mastered the basic recipe, creative variations can produce delightfully rewarding outcomes.
Without question skill in the elicitation process provides access to a wealth of powerful and effective behavioral options that might otherwise remain as mysterious and elusive as the sensory–specific