What is the game that most people play but deny they play?
In 2014, I got a job at HCSC. Little did I know that I was entering into a
strange new world.
The application I first worked on was called COB. The problem with COB was that it was constantly
sending incorrect data to other applications.
I had been told to go through all of the code of COB before
doing anything else. In the process, I
was impressed by how much of it was very well written.
So, I asked the team why they thought it was producing
invalid data. They told me that many
other applications sent data to COB.
They were sure that some of those applications were sending incorrect
data to COB.
So, I asked them what had been done to fix the problem. They told me that the teams for those
applications refused to even check if the data that their applications were
sending was valid.
So, I asked for the contact information for the team of one
of the suspected applications to see if I could work with them to verify the
data that their application was sending.
When I called them they acted like I was harassing them by asking for
their help.
I found this strange, because every other place I had worked
I was able to do this without any problem.
So, I verified that I had reached the team responsible for the
application and they confirmed that I had.
Since I was getting no cooperation from them, I looked up
their manager in the employee listings and asked him to have someone help me
verify that the data was valid. He told
me that his team would not be making any effort to do this.
Upon hearing this, I suspected that they knew that the data was
invalid, but they just wanted to cover up the issue instead of fixing it. They were counting on no one ever proving
that their data was invalid.
One of the principles of sound software engineering is “Do
no let garbage in”. However, there were
no gate keepers in COB to keep out invalid data.
So, I immediately began building an application for capturing
invalid data that came into COB along with recording information like when it
came in and what application it came from.
One part was data traps to be placed in the COB code that verified data
when it first came before COB ever processed it and wrote the error information
in a log file.
The other part would read the log file to produce a table
showing exactly how many times invalid data came from each application that
sent data to COB. It also included a
longer table that showed the source application of the invalid data, the exact
invalid data that came into COB, and the time that it came into COB for each piece
of invalid data that was captured.
Then I began the long process of inserting the data traps
into all places in COB where it received a data feed from another application.
Now during this time, my daughter was having health
problems, so I just worked from home whenever I needed to. Eventually, people complained that I was not doing
things in the manner they were used to and my boss asked me why I was not doing
what everyone else was doing.
I explained to him what I had been doing and showed him the
results. It proved that all of the
issues with COB sending out invalid data were the result of invalid data being
sent to it.
We now had the tools to end the biggest pain point that the
COB team had. I was only able to produce
results that other people had not been able to produce because I did not do
what everyone else was doing.
When he saw what I had created, he told me to keep working in
whatever manner would let me produce the best results. He then told me to work with the teams responsible
for sending the applications that sent the invalid incoming data to correct
their data.
So, I called the team with the application that was sending
the most invalid data to COB first. I
showed them the indisputable proof that their application was sending invalid
data and asked for a plan for fixing the issue.
However, their response was denial of the problem and
insisted that the process for trapping the invalid data must be flawed. So, I showed them how the data that their
application sent was validated by a gate keeper before COB ever did anything
with the data.
They could not deny that the data trapping process was not
flawed, but they still refused to do anything about it. So, I called their boss and showed him as
well, but he also refused to have his team do anything about it.
So, I did as I had been trained to do in the US Air Force
and began walking up the chain of command.
I called his boss, who also refused to do anything about it.
I persisted until I finally had walked up the chain to the
direct report of the CIO who was responsible for the area that their
application fell under. I told him what
was happening, and he called a meeting that included my boss and everyone in
the chain down to the manager of the application team.
At the meeting, he asked me to show the evidence that their
application was indeed sending COB invalid data. Then he told them to do their job and fix the
problem.
I had tried to work this out at the lowest possible level as
I had been trained to do in the US Airforce.
Unlike every other place I had worked at , I had been forced to walk the
chain beyond the boss of the team responsible.
The team responsible had denied the validity of undeniable
evidence until an executive had to embarrass their boss and his bosses in a
meeting with my boss. They were like
children who are used to their momma making excuses for their bad behavior, who
are shocked when a judge punishes them for it.
When I called the team for the application that was sending the
next largest amount of invalid data, they also denied it. However, when I called their boss he told
them to fix it.
After this, every team I called immediately cooperated. Soon, COB stopped receiving any invalid data
and stopped sending any out.
I had not made any friends among these teams in Chicago that
had been sending COB invalid data, but I had protected my team from being
blamed for things that were not their fault.
I could not understand why the people in Chicago had made this so hard.
So my boss gave me a four out of five rating on my
performance review. He told me that he
wanted to give me a five out of five, but HR (Human Resources) would not allow
it.
So, I investigated to find out why that was. HR basically said that numerous people in
Chicago had whined while trying to hold back their tears, “I went to work -and
-Remington – made -me – work.”.
My boss was all about results and I had saved our team from
their biggest pain point. However,
people in Chicago complained to HR about what they had forced me to do to make
them do their job so I could produce those results.
I had not only helped COB but also every employee who
depended upon the applications that received data from COB to do their jobs
well. It was bizarre that the company
was more concerned about not upsetting lazy employees than rewarding hard
working employees.
After this, things got even stranger.
Not surprisingly, HCSC was losing money and might have even
gone bankrupt if not for a contract they had with the state of Illinois. So, they had no choice but to have lay-offs.
In this process a new CEO was hired, who in turn hired an
outside consulting firm to determine who should be laid-off. They decided based on a number of objective
factors like what each employee had accomplished in the previous few years and how
well their skills matched the future needs of the company.
It was no shock to me that the teams who had fought me on
doing their jobs were among the hardest hit by the layoffs. It did not take the consulting firm long to
realize that their managers had kept their applications in poor working order,
so they could justify having a larger team to work on it.
However, COB also needed less people since they were no
longer having to spend most of their time correcting invalid data it put out as
a result of processing invalid data that had come into it. So, I was transferred to another team that
would be building a new application to replace some applications that were outdated
and expensive to maintain.
My boss and his boss were both laid off, but it worked in
their favor. They both got new jobs
before their last day at HCSC that paid more money, with better titles, and in
more desirable locations. So, they also
got to put all of their severance pay in the bank.
So, once again the Father of Truth (YHVH aka God aka THE
LORD) blessed those who had blessed me and cursed those who had cursed me as He
had promised Abraham (Genesis
12:1-3). This promise was for the
children of Abraham as well (Galatians
3:6-9).
So, in my new position I was given a new manager who worked
in Chicago. Since I was the only one on
the new project in Tulsa, he did not really care if I was in the office or at
home.
There was also a new position created called an ITPM (IT
Project Manager) in this reorganization.
This was a terrible idea because the ITPM effectively had two bosses –
the CIO and the head of the business segment that used the application.
No one can effectively serve two bosses and will ultimately
have to decide which one to please (Matthew
6:24). However, the attempts to
ignore reality went deeper than just this new position.
Soon I discovered that about 20% of the people that I worked
with in Chicago were actually competent.
Most of the competent ones were contractors who refused to become
employees of HCSC.
I worked with them, and we created some great solutions that
not only helped that application but also could be used to help improve the
development of all applications across the company. It was not long before the executive team in
Chicago was asking me regularly for advice about how we could make applications
across the company quicker, which produced better results and were more
maintainable.
When my next performance review came, my new manager gave me
four out of five stars. When I asked him
what it would take to get five stars, he responded that HR had made it almost
impossible for anyone to get five stars – except those who met some unspecified
criteria.
He also told me that there was a freeze on all
promotions. This was not uncommon when a
company was reorganizing and had a hiring freeze going on.
Not long after that, I was given a new manager who also
worked in Chicago after that manager was laid off in the next round of lay-offs. I continued to do great work and generally
help the company adopt better IT practices.
This manager also gave me a four out of five on my
performance review. She also said that
she would have liked to have given me a promotion but there was something more
that I needed to do besides what I had already done.
When I asked her what that was, she would not be more
specific. It was like she did not want
to say it out loud.
This was very strange.
Every company that I had worked for before this had given me some sort
of promotion, bonus, and raise for helping to improve the company. It was like HCSC valued something that nobody
wanted to say out loud over improving the company.
Soon, things got worse.
HR announced that we would be using matrixing in our future
performance reviews. This was where
things that had absolutely nothing to do with job performance were considered
in performance reviews, promotions, and raises.
It was employees in Chicago who wanted this. They were also making most of the decisions
about the application project I worked on.
The IT project manager did not take any of my advice -
unlike the executive team. This was
frustrating, and I began keeping a spreadsheet along with collaborating
evidence. A pattern soon appeared.
When a problem came up, I would suggest a solution, another
person would suggest the opposite, the IT Project Manager would take their
suggestion, disaster would ensue, and then finally they have no choice but to take
my suggestion. They did this over 100
times in a row.
It was like they got up every morning and took a stupid pill
before starting work. They simply seemed
incapable of learning from their mistakes.
After they managed two different projects where they spent
$100 million apiece on - with nothing to show for it - the IT Project Manager
and the man that kept giving her bad advice were both promoted. It was plain that something that nothing had
to do with producing good results was being matrixed into promotions.
Meanwhile, I had produced more IT artifacts than anyone else
on both teams and had solved most of their IT problems. I had helped them improve everything and
never had Quality Assurance find a single defect with anything I submitted for
testing.
First, I was given a performance review of three out of five
and then I was blamed for the failure of their projects. However, they were proven to be liars by the
evidence that I had kept – but they suffered no repercussions for their blame
shifting nor was my performance review corrected.
This was the first time in my long career that I had ever
gotten anything less than a four out of five on a performance review. Since I had proven that their accusations
were all lies, no one could really give a good reason why I was not given the
score my work had earned.
It was like stupid was some sort of brain-eating virus that spread
throughout the headquarters in Chicago like a plague. It seemed like they were determined to drive
out the best employees they had and promote the worst ones.
I wondered if there was any way that I could help the
company.
Relief came when I worked on a new team on a much larger
project in Tulsa. I was given a new
manager for this project who valued hard work and innovation.
He told me that he believed in promoting competence over
everything else. Working on this new project
under him gave new life to my work.
The entire team was located in Tulsa, and they were nothing
like the employees in Chicago. They
wanted to hear my ideas and the ITPM put them into practice.
The IT executives continued to implement my suggestions for
improvement. They seemed to have somehow
been immune to the brain-eating virus in was running rampant at the
headquarters in Chicago.
However, somehow it was beginning to take root in
Tulsa. One of the employees filed a
complaint against me because I explained to my friend at lunch why I would not
eat anything made with GMO corn.
I had told my friend that Monsanto – the inventor of GMO -
was the largest campaign donor to President Obama. I told him that the head of the FDA (Food and
Drug Administration) that he appointed approved it after the head of the FDA appointed
by President Bush had denied approval over long-term safety concerns for eight
years. This was common knowledge and the
main news story at the time.
Some woman that I did not know decided that I was against
GMO because I was against having an African-American president and complained
to HR. Nothing about my explanation to
my friend had anything to do with that, but stupid knows no bounds. Perhaps, she had moved to Tulsa from Chicago.
My new manager tried his best to explain why this woman was
not just plain stupid, but he really did not believe it himself. He told me that she was probably upset over
the lay-offs and had believed that President Obama would keep something like
that from happening.
Still, he told me that I needed to improve my soft
skills. He said there were probably
non-verbal clues that the woman was ease dropping and getting agitated by what
she heard.
He also had a way of asking me questions that I found
strangely irritating. For example: Why
did I never ask for help – even from my friends – until I had absolutely no
other options?
Other than that, things were going great, and I got a four
out of five on my next performance review.
I knew that a five was not possible for me under the new matrixing
system.
It was like I had woken up from a strange nightmare. This project would be completed on time and
under budget as long as employees in Chicago were not involved.
However at the headquarters in Chicago, they could see how
well a project was going without their interference. So they decided that this had to end and
began replacing the management in Tulsa with management from Chicago.
I could see where this was going, so I began entertaining
other offers. However, every time I was
about to accept one, the Father of Truth would send someone to tell me that I
needed to stay where I was. Sometimes it
was a co-worker, but sometimes it was a total stranger - like an old woman in a
grocery store.
So, I soon got a new manager from Chicago.
He soon began to make my work life miserable. He seemed determined to put an end to my
outstanding performance.
This new manager was determined that soft skills were more
important than hard skills. He had drunk
the “matrixing” Kool-Aid pitcher dry.
However, my job was almost entirely dependent upon hard
skills. Only minimal soft skills were needed
to interact with other IT professionals – who were focused on working together
to solve a hard problem.
The truth is that if my job was dependent upon soft skills,
then I would have fired me from it long ago.
My soft skills had degraded from the seven years of working from home
alone.
This manager thought he was really good at reading people,
but he was terrible at reading me. He
could not tell if I was angry or amused when he was talking to me. Good thing for him that I had promised Grampa
to never gamble, because I could have cleaned him out in poker.
All people will shut their emotions off in certain
situations to give them clarity of what needs to be done and the ability to do
it. For example, soldiers who experience
post-traumatic stress much later after a battle from bayonetting some else to
death, report that they felt nothing when they were doing it during the battle.
I had figured out how to do turn my emotions off on purpose
to get through crisis after crisis. So,
I began doing this every day when I went to work.
This manager managed to turn a job I had come to love into a
job I came to hate. There was no hope of
things getting better under this manager.
So, I decided that I had to find another job. I was even willing to take a job that paid
less money - even though I was already working on the cheap compared to other
offers I had been warned not to take or contracts I had worked on before.
Soon, I was close to securing another remote job for
considerably more money. However, the
night before I was going to accept it, I was once again warned not to do so by
an unlikely source.
I was watching a new Christian comedian for the first time
on YouTube, and he was telling about this tough softball coach that his
daughter had. She stunk at hitting balls
and wanted to quit because the coach only seemed to care about that skill.
However, the comedian had made her keep her commitment to
the team. So she stayed and ended up
becoming a great hitter due to this tough coach.
Then the comedian looked into the camera and said that there
was someone watching who had someone put into their life like that tough
coach. He then said that the Father of
Truth had put that tough coach into their life to make them better. Finally, he said that Father of Truth is
telling you to not leave and stay where you are – word-for-word what the old
lady in the supermarket had said!
I could not deny that the Father of Truth was very clearly
telling me to stay. So, I said “not my
will but yours be done”. The next
morning I went back to my job and gave up my efforts to leave.
This manager then told me that I needed to learn to play
the game.
I had come to work every day as one of my co-workers
described it “like a man on a mission” looking for ways to improve the
company. I had no idea that we were
playing a game or what that game was.
So, I asked him what the game was that I needed to learn how
to play. He did not want to say it out
loud, so he really did not give me a good explanation.
This manager seemed to have been sent into my life to cause
me trouble. Perhaps my US government
instilled superiority complex and admiration of my co-workers was causing pride
to start rising up in me that needed to be killed for my own good.
This is similar to what had happened to Paul the Jew (Shaul
aka Saul aka The Apostle Paul) (2
Corinthians 12:7). So, I started
referring to this manager as “The Messenger of Satan” when I talked to people
about what was going on at work because that seem to be the role he filled in
my life.
After this, this manager told me that he did not want me to
work over forty hours anymore. This took
away the time that I spent after five helping my coworkers solve their problems.
On top of that, he told me that I was not to spend any more
time on courses to improve my hard skills until he felt my soft skills were
adequate. Instead, he gave me a series
of soft skills courses that I had to complete.
I did not like any of this, but the Father of Truth said for
His children to obey their masters – not just the gentle ones, but also the
harsh ones (1
Peter 2:18-19). So, I complied with
everything this manager told me to do.
Not long after this, I was kicked off the project by the
ITPM.
I had saved the company from making a fifty-million-dollar
mistake according to the Deloitte consultants, but the IT Project Manager did
not like being overridden in the process.
Just like people in Chicago, he tried to blame me for not taking my advice
in the first place.
The Scrum Master for our Scrum-of-scrums had once called me
“the heart and soul” of the project. He
along with most of the project team could see that the ITPM had just made a
terrible mistake.
The project continually went downhill after that, while I
continued to take the soft skills classes that my manager gave me. The company gave me nothing else to work on
and I was forbidden to work on improving my hard skills.
These classes made me think about things that I had avoided
thinking about for years – like why I did not trust people until they proved to
be trustworthy. It was making me process
some of the negative emotions that had come from Dad and from keeping the
promise I had made to him.
The instructors spent a lot of time talking about non-verbal
communication and how it made up at least 55% of all communication. I began to see that it was like a secret code
that I had never learned - probably due to being isolated on the playground.
This secret code could be used to convey things that people
either did not want to say out loud or that people did not have the words to
say. Yet, some of it seemed familiar
somehow like I studied it before.
This explained why there were often misunderstandings
between me and a lot of people, but there was something that I was
missing. It did not all quite make
sense.
Then there were classes about the four motivators –
Acceptance, Authority, Accomplishment, and Autonomy. I could see how different people I worked
with had been motivated by one or more of these, but something seemed to be
missing.
One of the instructors commented that not everyone was
equally competent and referenced a government study. I love to read government studies, so I read
this one to see what they had found.
The study showed that 80% of all people are somewhat-to-very
incompetent at their job. It did not
matter if their job was flipping burgers or President of the United
States. Then it showed various factors
that accounted for that.
I began to see a pattern emerging between the four
motivators and levels of incompetence, but it was not quite coming together
completely. I needed to give it more
thought and research.
Also, I realized that I had known some of this stuff before,
if not in quite so formal terms, and had used these skills to manipulate people
before I had surrendered my life to the Man of Truth (Yeshua HaMashiach aka
Jesus Christ). These skills seemed to
have no honest use - just like skills to pick pockets or dissolve bodies.
Some of the instructors indeed acknowledged that these
skills could be used to manipulate people.
However, they insisted that was not what most people were using them for
in everyday life.
I had read a book years earlier called “How to win friends
and influence people”. When I had gotten
half-way through it, I thought surely people are not so shallow and naïve that
if you smile at them, look them in the eye, and say their name, then they will
think that you are their friend.
I had decided to test this out on some real-life
people. I was shocked to find out that
the book was right, and people really were that shallow and naïve.
The book had acknowledged that what it taught could be used to
fake friendship and manipulate people, but it had insisted that this was not
the intention. However, my experience in
corporate America showed me that was exactly what leaders and managers were
using it to learn.
So, I call the book “How to fake friends and manipulate
people”. I thought perhaps this was the
game that my manager kept telling me I need to learn how to play, but something
still seemed to be missing.
All of the things taught in this book is contrary to what
the Man of Truth taught and demonstrated about living honestly. If they wrote a book about his people skills,
then they would have called it “How
to lose friends and irritate people”.
Then I got assigned to a new project and a new manager.
This new RM was very different than the Messenger of Satan. She encouraged me to keep improving my soft skills
but still valued my hard skills.
She was not assigned to manage people of a large team, but
instead managed developers who were either part of one of several small teams
or part of a pool of developers who could be brought into help various small
teams on projects where they lacked the skills needed for the project.
So, it was in many ways similar to being a contractor again,
even though I was still an employee of HCSC.
It was a lot different than being part of the team that I had been removed
from by the ITPM.
The first several projects I worked with some developers
from India. The workers from India had
developed their own network and they knew that I would treat them fairly and
help them improve their skills, so they would ask for me to help them.
I ended up spending as much of my time teaching them how to
improve their code as I did coding. We
were basically practicing paired-programming, and I was the navigator as often
as I was the developer.
Some of them were very eager to practice the skills I taught
them and would solve a coding problem that I planned to fix before I could get
to it. This would free up time to solve
other technical problems that the project needed solving beyond coding problems
and to continue to improve my soft skills.
So, the nature of my work changed to one that relied less on
my hard skills and more on my soft skills.
It was definitely less demanding than the project that I had worked when
the Messenger of Satan had been my RM.
However, there was one project that was in the red and
looked like it had no hope of getting in the green. However, I knew it could be saved if the ITPM
would let me fix the root issue.
I explained to her that the cause was that our code was full
of snippets of faulty code that people kept copying and modifying. There was nothing to enforce the sound
software engineering principle of “Do not let garbage in” when it came to their
source code.
I then explained to her how I could place static code
analysis and linting into their code deployment pipeline to prevent this from
happening. I would also show the rest of
the team good code snippets that they could use in place of the bad ones.
She gave me permission and I implemented the plan. As a result of her foresight the project
finished in a green status, under budget, and ahead of schedule.
Soon I also began a COP (Community of Practice) to give
presentations on how people could improve the UI (User Interface) of our
applications. This was the area that the
developers employed by the company were weakest and the part of development that
the company was most dependent upon contractors to do.
This was the best thing I could do to help HCSC to stop
spending a lot of effort on projects that were doomed to failure – or that
would be an endless maintenance nightmare.
It also allowed me to practice my improved soft skills in a real-life
scenario.
I also began preparing to start a new COP on soft skills. I began creating artifacts for my
presentations based on independent research that I had done to figure out what
it was that the Messenger of Satan and the soft skills instructors hinted at
but would not say out loud.
Then Covid-19 hit and changed the world as we knew it.
One day we were told to leave the office and not to return until
we were told to do so. We were
instructed to work from home.
Covid-19 had begun hitting some parts of the US hard and
some states had already issued shelter at home mandates. Some cities even imposed martial law.
HCSC really did not have too much trouble transitioning. The executives had been receptive to my ideas
of distributed workforces with no central office and everyone working from home
were not entirely unworkable. As a result
we had adopted a model where people worked from home a couple of days a week
before Covid hit.
Soon, many companies – including those who had told me that this
was unworkable – were doing exactly what I had been advocating for over two
decades. Their reluctance was not due to
any hard issues, but rather to soft issues.
However, Covid was providing a proven grounds for my ideas
on a scale that I had not imagined. Soon,
companies were finding to their surprise that worker productivity increased
dramatically.
The office is full of distractions – including
co-workers. When people find a place
that is free of distractions, they are able to put more focus on their work.
This can be a problem for people like me though. Managers worried that workers would have
trouble working, but government studies have shown that the opposite is true –
workers have trouble ending their workday.
When you think of an idea at home but everything to carry it
out is at the office, then you have little choice but to wait until you get
back to the office to try it out.
However, when you work from home you are already at the office.
So, the biggest problem is work life displacing home
life. It takes a certain amount of
discipline that many people are lacking to maintain a proper work/life balance
without a physical separation between the workplace and home.
So, I saw the soft issues were greater than the hard issues
for this. I had always said that this
was not for everyone, but I did not realize how much less self-discipline that
most people had compared to myself.
I also continued my studies of soft skills during this
time.
I was beginning to unravel the human mind. What I was seeing was not pretty.
I had systematically taken notes from each source on the
subject and a framework began to take shape.
The gaps left by the earliest sources began being filled in by later sources.
Several times the emerging framework had to be adjusted to
maintain consistency when new information came in. The biggest change was needed after reading
the work of Kelley on follower types.
Kelly provided more than ample evidence that there were five
types of followers that could be mapped to two dimensions – effort and critical
thinking. These five types of followers
were Sheep, Yes-People, The Alienated, Star Performers, and Pragmatics.
In the corner with the lowest effort and lowest critical
thinking was the Sheep. In the opposite
corner were Star Followers.
In the corner with the highest effort and lowest critical
thinking was the Yes-People. In the
opposite corner was The Alienated.
In the middle was the Pragmatics. The ideal Pragmatic would give 50% of the effort
and 50% of the critical thinking.
However, this conflicted with the principle of only four primary
motivators: Authority, Acceptance, Accomplishment, and Autonomy. Then I realized that there was a fifth
primary motivator: Avoidance.
Now it all fit perfectly together with the government
studies that I had read on competency and the Pareto Principle.
Pareto had observed in Italy that 80% of the land was owned
by 20% of the people. He then went on to
create mathematical formulas and statistical models to explain the Pereto
Distribution.
Later Joseph Juran used the work of Pareto to prove
mathematically that the Pareto Distribution was not only valid for economics
and politics but was an underlying principle -similar to a law of physics –
that could be applied to every area of human endeavor.
Juran called this principle the Pareto Principle and applied
it to business management. He simplified
it for his business clients as “80% of the sales will come from 20% of the customers”.
However, the Pareto Principle applies to workers at every
level as well. Simply stated, 20% of the
workforce will produce 80% of the work.
That 20% were the Star Followers who were primarily
motivated by accomplishments They were
the 20% in the government studies that were actually incompetent at their job.
The Sheep were the very incompetent group who were primarily
motivated by avoidance. They sought to
avoid work of any kind – including critical thinking.
The other three groups were incompetent to somewhat
incompetent being between the Star Followers and the Sheep. Their competency level also mapped well to
their motivators.
The Yes-People motivated primarily by authority worked hard
but followed instructions blindly – even if it was plain that they would lead
to disaster. The Alienated primarily motivated
by autonomy thought of better solutions but did not want to have to work with
other people to implement them. The Pragmatics
primarily motivated by acceptance went along with whoever they were working
with and avoided any improvement if it meant upsetting other people.
However, after thinking about how people I knew fit into
each of these groups, I realized that there was variance within each group. Even among the Star Followers some were
barely competent and among the Sheep some were almost just incompetent.
So, I came up with a diagram based on the work of Kelley,
Pareto, and Juran that mapped out all possible combinations of effort and
critical thinking. I also mapped out
these combinations for each group and found that they each fit in a range that
covered 20% of the possibilities.
Here it is:
So, what makes Star Followers
see things more clearly than others?
I have extreme pareidolia – the
ability to see patterns that most people cannot see. Even though, pareidolia can be a form of apophenia
– seeing patterns where none exists – it is not always so.
In my case, often if I see images
in something like a bathroom tile, then some people can see them after I tell
them what I see. However, if I take a
picture of the tile and then literally connect the dots on the picture with a
marker, then most people can see it as well.
So, the patterns are actually
there just like in a connect-the-dots picture.
It is just that some people can see them easily and those who cannot see
them tend to think that the pattern is not really there.
This does not mean that I see only
the abstract pattern and not the real details.
For example, when I look at the moon and see a face, I still see the
individual craters as well.
For me this does not just apply to concrete objects that I
see, but also to abstract ideas as well.
When I discover a principle in one area, I find that it can be applied
to other areas as well.
For example, the principle of balance. In physics it is expressed as “for every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction” but in mathematics it is
expressed as “what is done to one side of the equation must be done to the
other side of the equation”.
It goes beyond math and science but into all areas of knowledge. For example, the principle of balance in
philosophy might be expressed as “what comes around, goes around” and in
religion as “the Father of Truth will treat you as you treated Him”.
Since I operate by applying principles that I learn in one
area to all areas, then these areas all become different facets of the same
thing in my mind. Math, art, science,
religion, business, philosophy, economics. politics, and so on are all the same
thing in my mind.
This has been very helpful in resolving problems that other
people could not in IT. In fact, they
sometimes could not even see that there was a problem.
Most people often cannot really understand the solution
either. They only understand the
difference that it made after it was implemented.
This is not uncommon among engineers. It is the source of the adage: “An engineer
is someone who provides a solution that you do not understand to a problem that
you did not know you had.”
This ability to think abstractly and recognize emerging
patterns is not something that can just be turned on and off. Those who have it see everything differently
and have inspired another adage: “They will never be normal. They will always be an engineer.”
Then it all started to come together.
In my study of soft skills I began to study epistemology –
the study of how people determine truth – to understand why people like me saw
things more clearly than most people. It
did not take long for patterns to appear that connected what the soft skills
instructors had hinted at - but would not say - with how people determine
truth.
As I continued to unravel the human mind, I could see that the
process was very similar to using a software rule engine to produce business outcomes. Every person has a rule engine for determining
truth.
There are four types of truth that people deal with. The one that people determine by their
internal truth engine is Believed Truth.
Real Truth is objective, absolute, and consistent. It is factual reality.
Believed Truth is subject, variable, and inconsistent. It is what each individual believes to be the
truth.
When people talk about their truth, they are talking about
their Believed Truth. Their Believed
Truth is not right or wrong on its own merit.
When Believed Truth matches Real Truth, then their Believed
Truth is right. Otherwise, their
Believed Truth is wrong.
Believed Truth is determined by their own internal Truth
Engine. A Truth Engine has a Truth Controller,
several Truth Pipelines, and a Truth Store.
Information is assigned to one of five statuses that reflect
what is believed about the truthfulness of it by the Truth Engine. The information and the status of the
information are the Believed Truth. The
Believed Truth is kept in the Truth Store to be retrieved when needed.
These five statuses are: Verified True, Verified False,
Suspected True, Suspected False, and Indeterminate. They are what is believed about the
information and how strongly it is believed, with Indeterminate meaning that
the information could not be determined to be true or false.
There can be more than one Truth Pipeline, but only one
primary Truth Pipeline. The other Truth
Pipelines are used for re-evaluating the status of information when new related
information conflicts with the stored status or for evaluating certain types of
less common information.
The Truth Controller controls which Truth Pipeline will
verify that the new information is true or false. It also determines what to do with
information that the Truth Pipeline could not verify.
The Truth Controller may try to process unverified
information through a different Truth Pipeline, or it may assign it one of the
other statuses based on the Truth Score that the Truth Pipeline gave for how
likely it is true or false. The Truth Store stores the status of information
after the information has assigned a status.
Each Truth Pipeline has its own set of sequential Truth
Gates that new information is passed through.
Inside each Truth Gate there is a sequential set of Truth Rulesets and
inside each Truth Ruleset there is a sequential set of Truth Rules.
Each individual Truth Rule is a single rule that is applied
to determine the status of new information.
Not all Truth Rules can be used for all types of information.
Information ceases to be processed as soon as a Truth Rule
determines that it has a verified status.
It is not passed on to other Truth Gates, Truth Rulesets, or Truth Rules
for further evaluation but is stored in the Truth Store by the Truth Controller. Otherwise, processing continues until it is
either verified by another Truth Rule or assigned a status by the Truth
Controller and stored in the Truth Store.
People acquire new Truth Rules over time through three
sources: experience, other people, and logical thinking applied to observed
facts. Each of these new Truth Rules are
placed in a Truth Ruleset with other related Truth Rules or are used to start a
new Truth Ruleset.
There is a Truth Gate for processing Truth Rulesets that
contain Truth Rules from each of these three sources. These
three Truth Gates are Personal Experience, Collective Wisdom, and Facts &
Logic.
People are all different and no two will ever have the same
set of Truth Rulesets in their Truth Gates nor the same Truth Rules in their
Truth Rulesets. Furthermore, they will
vary in how they configure Truth Pipelines using these Truth Gates.
Not all of these Truth Gates produce Believed Truth that
matches Real Truth equally well How well
they match is called accuracy.
Studies have proven that Personal Experience has accuracy as
low as 30% and Facts & Logic has accuracy as much as 99%. Yet the most common first Truth Gate is
Collective Wisdom and the least common is Facts & Logic. However, the overall accuracy of a Truth
Pipeline is determined by more than just this.
A Truth Pipeline can be either configured as a Simple Truth
Pipeline or a Complex Truth Pipeline by the Truth Controller. A Simple Truth Pipeline produces quicker results,
but a Complex Truth Pipeline produces more accurate results.
As a result, using multiple Truth Gates in a Simple Truth
Pipeline is less accurate than using only one Truth Gate, the chance of wrong
Believed Truth being stored increases with further processing. Conversely, using multiple Truth Gates in a Complex
Truth Pipeline is more accurate than using only one Truth Gate, the chance of
wrong Believed Truth being stored decreases with further processing.
As a result of this the least accurate Truth Pipeline has
been shown to be a Simple Truth Pipeline that uses Personal Experience, then
Collective Wisdom, and finally Facts & Logic to determine Believed
Truth. The most accurate Truth Pipeline
has been shown to be a Complex Truth Pipeline that uses Facts & Logic, then
Collective Wisdom, and finally Personal Experience to determine Believed Truth.
However, using a Complex Truth Pipeline with three Truth
Gates can take significantly longer to process than using a Simple Truth
Pipeline with only one Truth Gate. So, the
most accurate Truth Pipeline is a little more accurate than a Simple Truth
Pipeline that uses only Facts & Logic at the cost of a lot more time.
However, processing time cannot be ignored.
It matters because of the OODA loop discovered by Colonel
Boyd of the US Air Force. In air combat
the pilot with the fastest OODA loop is often the one that shoots down the
other plane.
OODA means Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It means when new information is observed,
like the presence of enemy aircraft, then orient by determining the
significance of the information, decide what action is needed based on that
significance, and finally immediately execute that action.
The Simple Truth Pipeline that uses only a Facts & Logic
processes information as quickly as possible with very high accuracy. This is the primary Truth Pipeline used by
the Star Followers that are nearest the corner of highest competence (100%
Effort and 100% Critical Thinking).
However, this is also the rarest primary Truth Pipeline. The most common is a Complex Truth Pipeline that
uses Collective Wisdom, then Personal Experience, and finally Facts & Logic
to determine Believed Truth. It is often
used by the center band groups: Yes-People, Pragmatics, and The Alienated.
In fact, most people use a Complex Truth Pipeline with three
Truth Gates as their primary Truth Pipeline.
The least common primary Truth Pipeline is a Simple Truth Pipeline with
only one Truth Gate.
However, the least common Truth Pipeline is much faster than
the most common Truth Pipeline. Studies
have shown that it produces a result in about 100 milliseconds while the most
common produces a result in about 500 milliseconds.
This is why Star Followers near the corner of highest
competency are only about three in ten thousand people. Their secondary Truth Pipeline is usually a
Complex Truth Pipeline that uses Facts & Logic, then Collective Wisdom, and
finally Personal Experience to determine Believed Truth because it is the most
accurate.
In fact, all Star Followers use Facts & Logic as either
the first or second Truth Gate in their primary Truth Pipeline. The most common Truth Pipeline among them is
a Complex Truth Pipeline with Common Wisdom, then Facts & Logic, and
finally Personal Experience to determine Believed Truth.
Yet the response to conflicting information matters even more
than speed.
One other thing that sets Star Followers apart is their normal
response to new information that shows their Believed Truth does not match Real
Truth. This happens when at least one of
their Truth Rules is inaccurate.
One response that other groups use is denial of the Real Truth,
and they keep on using the inaccurate Truth Rule that is producing Believed
Truth that does not match Real Truth. A
second response is to justify the Truth Rule as accurate and deny that it is producing
Believed Truth that does not match Real Truth - so they keep using the
inaccurate Truth Rule.
The third response is disorientation where the Truth Rule is
acknowledged as inaccurate and removed from the Truth Ruleset - leaving no
Truth Rule available to process similar information. This results in formerly verified information
being updated to Indeterminate status.
The other groups will have one of these responses due to
their primary motivation. They will
sometimes use the fourth response if there is no conflict with that motivation.
The Sheep will have one of these responses to avoid the
effort needed to update the status of previously stored information and take
action to prevent future similar information from being inaccurate. The Pragmatics will do the same to avoid
conflict with others who want to continue to use their inaccurate Truth Rule.
The Yes-People will have one of these responses to avoid
admitting that a Truth Rule given by an authority was inaccurate. The Alienated will do the same to avoid
admitting that a Truth Rule given by an authority was accurate while their own
Truth Rule was inaccurate.
The fourth response is improvement of the Truth
Ruleset. The old Truth Rule is
acknowledged as inaccurate and replaced with a new Truth Rule that produces Believed
Truth that matches Real Truth. Then all
previously stored similar information that was evaluated with the old Truth
Rules is re-evaluated using the new Truth Rule and the status of the
information is updated.
This is the response that Star Followers will normally use
because of their primary motivation is accomplishment. They are continually looking to produce the
best possible outcome and that requires using Truth Rules that produces
Believed Truth that matches Real Truth.
So, it was becoming clearer why the other groups were
often at odds with people like me.
The closer someone is to the middle of the distribution diagram
(50% Effort / 50% Critical Thinking), the more people there are that can relate
to them. Conversely, the closer someone
is to one of the corners, like the corner of extreme competence (100% Effort /
100% Critical Thinking), the fewer people there are that can relate to them.
So, the Star Followers that use a Simple Facts & Logic
Truth Pipeline as their primary Truth Pipeline are rarely understood by people
of any group besides other Star Followers.
Their thinking is simply too different than people of the other groups
because they are not trying to avoid anything except failing to accomplish
their goal.
I had another factor that set me apart from most Star
Followers as well. It was why even they
had trouble understanding me at times – even though they could not argue with
the results.
The Spirit of Truth (Ruach HaQodesh aka The Holy Spirit aka
The Holy Ghost) that lives in me guides me into all truth as the Man of Truth
promised (John
16:13). So, errors are brought to my
attention and corrected before my Truth Controller ever stores new information
in my Truth Store.
This is no different than the principle of “keep garbage from
ever getting in” used in sound software engineering. When followed consistently there simply is no
inaccurate Believed Truth to be corrected.
However, other Star Followers without the Spirit of Truth –
or that have not learned how to follow the leading of the Spirit of Truth –
cannot understand how someone can continually create defect free software at a
rate that is faster than other people.
The results boggle the minds of those who do not know the Father of
Truth well.
After this, I got some time to finally understand the
game.
It was not long before that project was over, and I was
given nothing else to do. So, I returned
to working with groups on improving the CI/CD pipeline that I had convinced the
previous CIO to implement.
I also helped solve other issues like tightening up our IT
security. It was similar in many ways to
the work I had done years before at other places.
Still, I had time to finish the presentations for a new COP
on soft skills that I called “Unraveling the Human Mind”. I had systematically put together everything
I had learned, and it was almost complete.
As I finished compiling everything together, suddenly I
understood what the Messenger of Satan meant about playing the game. I finally understood what game he meant and
why I had no idea about how to play it.
In epistemology, there are two other types of truth besides
Real Truth and Believed Truth. There is
also Expressed Truth and Discerned Truth.
Expressed Truth is external, selective, and sometimes
inconsistent. It is what people express
to other people as their Believed Truth.
Discerned Truth is internal and inconsistent. It is what people discern to be the Believed
Truth of other people.
When the Expressed Truth of a person matches their Believed
Truth, then they are being honest.
Hower, when their Expressed Truth does not match their Believed Truth,
then they ae lying.
When the Discerned Truth of one person matches the Believed
Truth of the other person, then they have discerned correctly. When their Discerned Truth does not match
the Believed Truth of the other person, then they have discerned incorrectly.
When people are not always honest, it creates problems in
communication. It is easy for the Discerned
Truth of one person to not match the Believed Truth of the other person.
If the first person is honestly expressing their Believed
Truth, but the Discern Truth of the other person does not match, then the
second person is misunderstanding the first person. However, the first person is lying about
their Believed Truth, and it matches the Discerned Truth of the other person,
then the other person has been deceived by the first person.
So, each person is trying to discern the Believed Truth of
the other person while trying to keep the other person from discerning their
own Believed Truth. This is the game
that the Messenger of Satan was talking about but would not say out loud.
Then I realized how people played the game.
Both people start looking beyond the contents of each
other’s words in forming their Discerned Truth about the Expressed Truth of the
other person. They know that the words
of the other person cannot be relied upon alone for discerning their Believed
Truth.
They examine one of three things primarily to do this. These are the actions of the other person, the
words of the other person, and non-verbal communication.
Countless studies have proven what most philosophers have
observed – that actions are the most reliable indicator of what someone else
really believes. In fact, it is rarely
wrong.
The next most reliable indicator is their words. Their Expressed Truth can often be discerned
as their Belief Truth or not when the contents of their words are run through a
highly accurate Truth Pipeline.
The least reliable indicator by far is non-verbal
communication. It can be easily
misinterpreted and manipulated to give a false message.
This is why some of this seemed familiar to me, because I
used to study these things in theater class.
Most of acting is learning to manipulate non-verbal communication to
convince the audience that you think and feel something regardless of what you
really think or feel.
Before I surrendered to the Man of Truth, I had used these
skills for this purpose off-stage as well as on-stage. I found it extremely easy to get people to
discern your Believed Truth incorrectly by getting them to focus on non-verbal
communication. As long as they did not
think about my actual words or pay attention to my actual actions, I could get
them to believe whatever I wanted them to believe.
However, according to an extensive study by Dr. Mehrabian people
examine non-verbal communication to discern
Believed Truth of other people 70% to 90% of the time. His study found that they examine the words
6% to 25% of the time and only examine the actions 1% to 5% of the time.
Most people will use the least effective method – examining non-verbal
communication – first and then resort to the second most effective method – examining
words – if they have doubts. Most will
only use the most effective method - examining actions – if they have no other
recourse.
This explained why it was so easy to manipulate people using
the acting skills I had learned in theater class. It was becoming clear why I was misunderstood
so frequently by other people.
It also explained why the ITPM who seemed to take a stupid
pill every morning could keep making bad decisions day after day. The person who kept contradicting me was
using non-verbal communication to manipulate her and as long as she kept using
that to discern their Believed Truth she would keep being deceived by them.
However, the puzzle was not solved yet.
It made no sense for people to keep doing the least
effective thing. Something had to drive
them to keep using something that did not work well.
The reason for this is that the same as why most people use
Collective Wisdom as their first Truth Gate.
Both of these take the least amount of effort and critical thinking.
In the same manner, they will use Personal Experience as
their second Truth Gate and examine the words as their second method for
discerning what other people believe. Both
of these take the next smallest amount of effort and critical thinking.
They will finally resort to using Facts & Logic and
examining the actions when they have no other choice. Both of these take the most amount of effort
and critical thinking.
For example, it took me a lot of effort to track each time I
advised that ITPM, record information about it like whose advice she ultimately
took, keep all the evidence to prove the accuracy of my records, and analyze the
records. It showed the Real Truth about
the situation, but most people would not have been willing to do it.
Only people in the Star Follower group – those motivated
primarily by accomplishment - would do such a thing. People in the other groups would have avoided
the effort due to their primary motivations.
Instead, they will just play the game of trying to hide
their Believed Truth while discerning the Believed Truth of other people by using
non-verbal communication to manipulate other people.. The game does not give great results, but
they are comfortable playing it.
However, there are three things that really disrupt the
game.
One is those who examine first the actions and then the
words of other people to discern their Believed Truth. Those who do so will almost always discern
what other people really believe.
Second is those who are not using non-verbal communication
to manipulate other people. They are
often misunderstood by most people who examine non-verbal communication to
discern what they really believe.
The third is those who are not playing the game but only
express their Believed Truth honestly. Since
other people expect them to be lying some of the time, they will invariably
discern the Believed Truth of these people incorrectly.
This disruption causes friction between the disruptors and
everyone else. There is frustration on
both sides.
Those playing the game are frustrated because nothing that
they usually do to hide their Belief Truth and manipulate people gives them the
usual results. Those not playing the
game are also frustrated – especially if they are unaware of the game - because
they do not understand how people can keep misunderstanding what they mean by
their words and how people can keep doing the same stupid things over and over
again.
I had been doing all of these things. It was disrupting the game that irritated
them – even though I saved their projects from disaster when they let me.
No wonder so many people complained that I was disruptive to
their process – even though it produced disastrous results without my
disruption. The real issue for them was
protecting the game.
People who play the game are intimidated by those who do
not. They fear that those who do not
play the game will discern the truth that they are trying to hide and expose
it.
The real problem is that they do not realize who is
behind the game.
The game relies on Expressed Truth not matching Believed
Truth – lying- and Father of Lies (HaShatan aka Satan Aka The Devil) is who
invented lying (John
8:44). Every time people play the
game, they are showing that they are like him (Ephesians
2:2).
The Father of Lies brought rebellion into the world by
saying that the Father of Truth was playing the game instead of always speaking
words of truth (Genesis
3:4-5). The Father of Lies still
uses the game to turn people away from the simple truth about the Man of Truth
(2
Corinthians 11:3).
The game keeps people from discerning the truth – even when
the evidence is indisputable (John
12:37-40). The game is used by the
Father of Lies to keep people from seeing the truth of the Gospel (2
Corinthians 4:4).
The game - that people think makes them wise - prevents them
from seeing the simple truth of the Gospel (1
Corinthians 1:17-21). They cannot
understand the truth when it is spoken by people who do not play the game (2
Corinthians 1:12).
People who play the game think everyone else is playing the
game as well (Matthew
27:62-64). So, they cannot discern
that the truth expressed by those who are not playing the game is always their
believed truth (John
8:55).
Many of those who say they are followers of the Man of Truth
are also playing the game (Romans
16:17-18). Like the Father of Lies,
they say that the Father of Truth is playing the game instead of speaking only
words of truth (Galatians
6:7-8).
They say that the Father of Truth is playing the game when
He says he will punish evil behavior (Ephesians
5:3-6). They say He is playing the
game when he demands righteous behavior (1
John 3:6-7).
The Father of Truth does not want us playing the game just
like He is never playing the game (1
John 1:5-6). He wants us to walk in
truth at all times like He does (2
John 1:4).
The Father of Truth does want us to be like the Alienated
that lean on their own understanding, but to trust in Him to lead us in all of
His ways (Proverbs
3:5-7). He does not want us to be
Yes-People that blindly follow any human authority, but to be more noble and
verify that they are telling us the truth (Acts
17:10-11).
The Father of Truth does not want us to be the Pragmatics
that are trying to offend no one, but to speak the truth of the Gospel whether
people want to hear it or not (2
Corinthians 2:15-17). He does not
want us to be like the Sheep that avoid the effort needed to know the truth,
but wants us to make every effort to verify it for ourselves (2
Timothy 2:15).
The Father of Truth wants us to be wise men that seek after
the Man of Truth – Star Followers (Matthew
2:1-2). He wants us to use the sound
software engineering principle of keeping garbage from ever getting in (1
Thessalonians 5:21).
The Father of Truth wants us to be motivated by
accomplishment, so that we will do His will until we reach the goal (Hebrews
10:35-36). We must be Star Followers
to do what pleases Him (Hebrews
11:6).
The Father of Truth wants us to not do things based on our
egos, but to seek to do what is best for other people (Philippians
2:3-4). He wants to seek after the
good of our employers and be Star Followers at work – because we are really
working for the Man of Truth (Colossians
3:22-24).
The Father of Truth wants us to run for the prize and fight
for the crown (1
Corinthians 9:23-26). He wants us to
be like a man on a mission who ignores everything that would keep him from
accomplishing his goal (Hebrews
12:1).
The Father of Truth wants us to be like the Man of Truth who
set his face like flint when faced with trouble (Isaiah
50:5-7). He wants us to follow the
example of the Man of Truth, who even died on a cross to accomplish His will (Hebrews
12:2-3).
The Father of Truth wants us to think like the Man of Truth and
do whatever is necessary to accomplish His will (Philippians
2:5-8). The Man of Truth is the
ultimate Star Follower, and we are to be like him in this world (1
John 4:14-17).
You can become a Star Follower like the Man of Truth.
If you are one of the Sheep, you can do this because he will
make it easy (Matthew
11:28-30). You will find that the
commandments of the Father of Truth are not too heavy to carry out (1
John 5:1-3).
If you are one of the Pragmatics, you can do this because
you will be accepted by the Father of Truth (Acts
10:34-35). You will find that it
does not matter who rejects you if He accepts you (2
Corinthians 5:9-11).
If you are one of the Yes-People, you can do this because
you will be saying yes to the highest authority (Mark
16:15-19). You will find that you
can say no to every authority that contradicts the highest authority (Acts
5:27-29).
If you are one of the Alienated, you can do this because you
will be put in charge for your faithfulness (Matthew
24:45-47). You will be given a
deposit to guarantee that you will be given everything that is promised (Ephesians
1:10-14).
If you are already a Star Follower -but not of the Father of
Truth -, you can do this because you will no longer be working to accomplish
things that you are going to lose anyways (John
6:27). You will be like a man on a
mission to accomplish something that you will never lose (1
Corinthians 9:25).
The Spirit of Truth can make anyone able to be a Star
Follower like the Man of Truth (Romans
8:4-9). The Spirit of Truth will
make you overcome everyone who is playing the game (1
John 4:4-5).
The Man of Truth came to end the game and that is why those who
are playing the game hate him (John
3:19-21). So, they persecute the
followers of the Man of Truth to protect the game (John
15:18-20).
Yet the day will come when the Man of Truth ends the game (Romans
2:16). Everything they have tried to
hide will be made known to everyone (1
Corinthians 4:5).
We can be certain that the Man of Truth will end the game
because the Father of Truth raised him from the dead (Acts
17:31). This is the reason that he
came (1
John 3:8).
So become a Star Follower like him, because you believe this
is true (Romans
10:9). Then you will no longer be
playing the game (Ephesians
5:8-11).
Come into the House of Truth!
Labels: Deception, Human Behavior, Motivation, Soft Skills, Truth
