The distinction we are making is that between Learning I and Learning II (learning to learn). In his essay "The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication," Gregory Bateson discusses and defines the differences between types of learning:

"Zero learning is characterized by a specificity of response, which— right or wrong — is not subject to correction.

Learning I is change in specificity of response by correction of errors of choice within a set of alternatives.

Learning II is change in the process of Learning I, e.g., a corrective change in the set of alternatives from which choice is made, or it is a change in how the sequence of experience is punctuated."

The example Bateson gives of the two processes at work is the following:

"… you can reinforce a rat (positively or negatively) when he investigates a particular strange object, and he will appropriately learn to approach it or avoid it. But the very purpose of the exploration is to get information about which objects should be approached or avoided. The discovery that a given object is dangerous is therefore a success in the business of getting information. The success will not discourage the rat from future exploration of strange objects."

Finding out which objects to avoid is the content of the process at the level of Learning I. It is essentially the procedure of establishing anchors and making connections appropriate to the achievement of an outcome. In this case an animal or person "learns" when a stimulus anchors a particular behavioral response or program (going when the light turns green, or learning multiplication tables, for example).

The strategy for discovery (the process of exploration) employed by the rat comes from a different level of learning. Learning II is establishing or changing the strategy by which you are gathering information and establishing the anchors and connections through which you achieve outcomes. This kind of learning would involve changes in representational systems and sequences. The rat, for instance, may explore visually, by looking at objects; olfactorily, by sniffing at them; auditorily, by listening to them; or kinesthetically by touching them with its nose. The rat may also sequence these modes of exploration. It may be to the rat's benefit, in some situations, to look at and sniff an object before touching it with its nose. How the rat establishes these patterns takes place through a different process from that of Learning I.

A chemistry professor may be "good" at chemistry, in terms of knowing the formulas, when and how to apply them and what will result, but may have had a difficult time learning it when he was in school. In other words, he knows the content very well (successful Learning I) but has a poor strategy for learning to learn it (Learning II). This person may, of course, have had very effective strategies for motivation and tenacity, but if your outcome is to teach people to learn chemistry easily and efficiently you will not want to install this professor's strategy for learning. Instead you would want to elicit and install the strategy of someone who is able to pick up and be creative with the content of chemistry very quickly and smoothly (like presumably Linus Pauling, for instance), or design one that is more suited to that outcome.

Most educators, as we pointed out earlier, are unaware of strategies and either don't teach them at all or else they unconsciously reinforce for their own strategies, which may not be the best suited for the material they are working with. An elementary school teacher may have a great strategy for dealing with children, but a poor spelling or reading strategy.

It will be very important, then, when you design tests to gather feedback from students to make this distinction in what to test for. The process of designing, installing and testing new strategies will be covered in the remaining two sections of this book.

4.42 Business and Organizational Development.

There are many aspects of business and organizational interactions that we could consider, and we will single out specific areas as we go through this section. But there will be general applications of NLP elicitation and utilization procedures for this field that hold for all situations in which communication between human beings is involved, which we can generalize across all of these aspects.

The most important resources of any business are the people that make it run. Being able to organize and deal with people effectively is the principal task of almost every executive, supervisor, manager and administrator, no matter what kind of business is involved. There are four essential steps in doing this successfully:

A. Rapport

Establishing rapport with the individuals you work with will pay off by greatly cutting down unnecessary resistance to the job you are trying to get done. Your approach with each individual will powerfully influence the course of the interaction. By pacing the person's strategies and other behavior, picking up his vocabulary, mirroring and feeding back his voice tonality and tempo, facial expressions, posture and gestures, it will be possible for you to establish a rapid and worthwhile rapport.

Investing the necessary time to establish positive anchors and resource anchors at the beginning of a communication interchange can profitably assist in speeding up progress toward the desired net outcome of the interaction.

B. Information Gathering

Knowing what information you need and how to get it will greatly assist you in getting things accomplished rapidly and successfully. Grounding this information as much as possible in specific sensory based language (that is, so that it is in terms of things that everybody can explicitly see, hear, feel and smell) will be well worth the effort in streamlining any plan, procedure, negotiation or operation. By using the meta–model, paying attention to nonverbal cues, organizing your information gathering tactics in terms of the three–point process and putting emphasis on form and process, you will quickly pinpoint what changes are required to eliminate costly or time–consuming problems as you discover what strategies are required to open profitable and dynamic new possibilities of action. The minimal information to be gathered for any decision making, problem solving, change or transition process to be properly engineered would consist of:

What do you want? (Desired/outcome state.)

What is happening now? (Present state.)

What stops you from getting what you want? (Problem state.)

What do you need in order to get what you want? (Resources.)

How would you know if you were moving adequately toward your goal? (Feedback.)

Have you ever got it before? What did you do then? (Resources.)

These are purely process questions. You will want to get other evaluative (meta) information at some point as well (i.e. a cost benefit analysis), such as: What will it cost? What is it worth? Do I (we) have the resources?

Pacing, described in the step on rapport, is a quick and efficient way of gathering information. Pacing gives you rapid access to information about the model of the world and the strategies of those you are working with. By simply feeding back an individual's behavior you will actually begin to pick up naturally many of the details of their strategies and operations.

C. Delivery/Presentation

By packaging the delivery and presentation of your ideas and suggestions in a way that is consistent and congruent with the strategies and models of the people you are dealing with, you will make those ideas maximally acceptable to them. In presenting several alternatives you may choose to package only the alternative you identify as most beneficial to you and your client in the form which matches their unconscious strategies. By so doing, you exert a powerful influence on the decision. In either case these tools achieve their effectiveness by using information about the patterns of personal organization which lie outside the conscious appreciation of the person being addressed.