I comment frequently in this blog on what appears to be a silly, simple thing:  The definition of a word.  Whether it is propaganda, obscenity, or strategic communication, I gnaw and nag, harp and pick, hector and harass over what It means.  Here’s why.

Today through Small Wars Journal I read . . .

US Army/USMC COIN Center Webcast – A Study of Pashtun “Tribes” in Afghanistan

The US Army/USMC Counterinsurgency Center is pleased to host Dr. Michael Weltsch from the Human Terrain System Reachback Center for a COIN Center Webcast from 10:00 CST, (1100 EST), (16:00 ZULU) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010.

I do a Google search on the author and title and through the magic of the Internet, search engines, and other people’s effort, I find a link at scribd.com with a paper from the author.  Reading the paper provides a practical persuasion revelation for me.  And it revolves around the definition of a simple, silly word, Tribe.

Dr. Weltsch offers a strong review and reading of the appropriate research literature and demonstrates to me at any rate that there are Tribes in Iraq but that there are not Tribes in Afghanistan.  If you don’t see the persuasion (and SC) implications of that assertion, you do not know what you are doing.  Any part of the Long War of Words in Afghanistan must strategically select and define TACTs – the Target, Action, Context, and Time – the specific, concrete behavior change any communication intervention aims to produce.  Those TACTs must include in the Target specification a lot of folks who are Pashtun.

Now, as a communication guy considering how to design, execute, and evaluate the intervention, how I understand my Pashtun Targets is going to depend heavily upon how I understand that one simple, silly word, Tribe.  Prior to reading this paper by Weltsch, anytime I had seen the word, Tribe, applied to anyone in Afghanistan I would have assumed a strong group identification on kinship and all that brings to group politics, gender roles, economics, religion, openness to outsiders, and on and on.  Such a definition would lead me to look long and hard at the Norm component from the Theory of Planned Behavior and expect that I should and could look for persuasion plays based on Tribe Norms to design my communication.

And, by my read of Dr. Weltsch’s paper, I’d be wrong to do that.

Instead of thinking about Tribes in the Iraqi sense, I’d better think about the Tribes of Afghanistan in a new way, as Qawm.  I may still find Norms a useful line of planning and execution, but with the Qawm definition I will move quite differently than with Tribe.

(If you want more detail on this, please read the paper.  It is an excellent example of a review of the lit with strong writing, organization, and evidence.  And, for those of you who do not like to Read The Whole Book, the mess revolves around male first cousins, inheritance, property rights, and badly defined boundary lines.  Finally, Weltsch suggests the word, Faction, as a primary element of Qawm – read the Federalist Papers, folks, for an interesting take on Factions.  Maybe Pashtuns will like Liberal Democracy after all?)

The trick here is that the word Tribe carries so much meaning, depth, and heft that even though elements of the definition intersect with Qawm, if you stick with the standard meaning of Tribe in Afghanistan, you will probably fail and fail from the start of your persuasion and SC efforts, at least among Pashtuns.

And, of course, this problem of definition applies not simply with Tribes and Qawm among Pashtuns, but with any Target of any persuasion play.  If you cannot define the Who, how can you hope to change the What, When, and Where?  It’s the difference between a Tribe Called Pashtun and a Tribe Called Quest.

Don’t do it.

Don’t even think about it.

Why make promises you know you won’t keep?  It’s bad for your self esteem, your reputation, and your character.  Just keep doing those bad things you do, I mean, gee whiz, you survived another year doing It, so how bad can It be?

On the other hand, New Year’s Resolutions are smart, hip, and trendy.  All the Very Cool People do it.  They read books and blogs and interview experts, compare and contrast with respected peers, especially peers from different cultures and backgrounds.  How do you Buddist-Wiccan-Baptist-Metrosexual-Vegan-NRA Acolyte-Progressive-Survivalist-Muslim’s do It?  (As if bad habits reveal culture more than universal human nature.)

Okay.  Maybe you want It.  Start This or Stop That or Just A Little.

Here’s how you persuade yourself.

It’s called Implementation Intentions which, unusually for most persuasion theories, means pretty much what it says.  Do your plans or Implement your Intentions.

When people create rich, dense, elaborated, detailed, fine-grained . . . you get it . . . plans for their Resolutions they are more likely to Just Do It.

For example, imagine that you wanted to take a cross-country driving trip across America.  What would you need to actually do the trip?  A vehicle, a map, money and a credit card for expenses (and maybe savings to create them), clothes, food and drink, and on and on.  You pack the car, plan the route, check the weather, your work schedule, and on and on, just the normal details of Road Trip!

This is the process of Implementation Intentions.  It works with any volitional, controlled, planned, Intended action.  The more you plan on how to Implement, the more likely you will hit your Intention.

So, you want to lose 15 pounds . . . well, that means two things:  access to food and amount of exercise.  Plan to reduce your access to food and plan to increase your exercise.  Buy less food.  Remove extra food lying around in your house.  Don’t walk or drive by fast food joints or vending machines.  Get good exercise clothes and leave them lying around in view for easy access.  Make an exercise schedule and cross off each workout you plan on the schedule.  And on and on.  Make detailed plans.

Implementation Intention works because you think about process instead of the goal.  Just having the goal of losing 15 pounds won’t make it happen.  You also need the process that reaches the goal, all the stuff, the schedule, the details of action.  And the process is the hard part and is the reason we fail at our New Year’s Resolutions.  Process is why LeBron James is LeBron James and not riding the pine in a YMCA youth league.  Process is the grind, the action, the steps you take to make a goal pop out at the end.

But, never forget the Rule:  If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.

So, just take out a piece of paper and a pencil.  At the top write your Goal.  Then on each following line write a detailed action step that is part of the Process for popping the Goal.

Or you could just get a good friend, share vodka Martinis, and revel in your human nature.

Politely put, this blog seeks to think outside the box, color outside the lines, and in general try to ride a beam of light while sitting in a trolley car.  Less politely, the blog aims to be outrageous, foolish, and weird; sans sense, restraint, or good manners.  More poetically, to be mad, bad, and dangerous to know.  To that end, let me recommend a book no practical or theoretical persuader would consider:  Uncommon Therapy, the Psychiatric Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, written by Jay Haley.

Note immediately that both Erickson and Haley were serious scholars while also pursuing the therapeutic arts.  People smarter than me still read them, think about them, and cite them.  They are scientists seeking control through knowledge.  Erickson and Haley also approached therapy with an orientation anyone would call persuasion:  They wanted to move the client to a therapist selected goal using communication as their tool.

Realize, second, the context.  We’re dealing with willing receivers who believe they can get better.  They seek us out and want our ideas.  Everyone but your enemies wants this or can be led to believe they want this.  This is or can be all states of interaction short of a state of war.  Thus, with anyone with whom you are not trying to kill or “kill,” you can apply these ideas.  But always:  This is a situation where the receiver seeks you, even if you arranged for this to happen.  Finally, the receivers are open to change, to the better, even if they see barriers.

Quick internal summary:  good research aimed at changing people who are “troubled,” and want change through or from you.

Now, consider this incomplete list of tactics.

Seed ideas.
Employ metaphors of change.
Encourage resistance.
Provide worse alternatives.
Encourage a relapse.
Enhance responding through frustration.
Avoid self exploration.
Control space and position.

Notice three broad factors working in these tactics.  First, don’t be obvious, just seed the change you want.  Second, deliberately prevent receivers from easily getting to the seeded changes.  Third, manipulate, trick, misdirect, and otherwise control receivers thinking, feeling, and acting while appearing to do something else.

Let me sketch my persuasion take on the tactics.

Seed ideas and Employ metaphors of change.  These two tactics suggest an indirect approach where you do not explicitly state a desired goal or offer an explicit means of achieving it.  You move through indirection with seeds and other metaphors.  These abstractions allow receivers to generate many self-caused and novel responses (i.e. elaborate on the Argument) which is a High WATT approach.  Metaphors can also avoid or elide barriers.

Encourage resistance; Provide worse alternatives; Encourage a relapse; Enhance responding through frustration; and Avoid self exploration.  These tactics deliberately interfere with receiver goal attainment.  It is a motivational tactic with tinges of dissonance and reactance.  First, you seed a metaphor of desired change, but then second, you make the seed more attractive by blocking it.  Receivers must self-motivate to clear the obstacles which produces internal attributions.  This also has tones of inoculation where your weak offense (resistance, worse alternatives, relapse, frustration) encourages a strong defense in the receivers.

Please realize serious limitations to Uncommon Therapy and practical persuasion.  These tactics aim at people with problems seeking solutions with you.  A sales situation is NOT an example of this situation.  You fool yourself if you conceptualize a customer seeking a product or service as somebody with a Milton Erickson kind of “problem.”  Realize that if you get exposed doing this in a practical persuasion situation, you may face a bad backlash.  This is an incredibly manipulative, deliberate, and deceptive approach in most typical situations.  Your appearances do not match your actions.

So, when do you do this?

If I’m in the State Department or the Department of Defense doing “strategic communication,” I do it everyday with any and every foreign counterpart.  Anytime my counterpart has a “problem” and seeks solutions with and through me, you are in a position to apply Uncommon Therapy tactics.  Seed the change you want with metaphors.  Then make active blocking moves that frustrate attainment of the seeded change.

If, I’m a leader/manager/supervisor, I use this to motivate both “problem” receivers and receivers with problems to solve.  Move indirectly.  Offer parables, stories, and other metaphors that exemplify the problem and/or solutions.  Then frustrate easy attainment.  Make the employee with the problem to solve or the “problem” employee struggle through barriers to make the seed bear fruit.

Here’s an example from marriage counseling.

A distressed married couple approaches Erickson about their woes.  He determines that the couple has problems with sex and also does not like talking about this sensitive topic.  He then discusses other situations where the two are together for their mutual enjoyment and hits upon dinner.  He finds that each likes having dinner together and through further discussion finds that each like dinner in different ways.  The woman likes a long, leisurely meal with interesting appetizers before the main dish while the man likes to dive right into the meat and potatoes.  He does not let this analogy go too far and when the man and woman try to make any comparison to sex, Erickson diverts them.  Later in the session, as part of therapy, Erickson requires to the couple to have a dinner together before the next counseling session.

Here’s my ELM analysis.  The metaphors you choose function as strong Arguments aimed at the desired change.  You block receivers easy access to these Arguments which causes them to go High WATT and to elaborate on these metaphors.  This Central Route processing produces strong attitude change that also makes the attitude more active and relevant in the appropriate situation.  Thus, after “therapy,” the receivers have stronger and more favorable attitudes about the change and are more likely to show the behavior in future situations, resist counterattacks to the change, and persist over time.

Now, of course, most practical persuasion situations are not therapeutic in the fullest sense of the word.  I am not offering this post as a new line of persuasion.  Rather ride the trolley car of this as a metaphor and let it stimulate your imagination and contemplation about how you persuade.  Think about the uses of metaphor as a seed rather than as a narrative or a frame.  Consider how blocking tactics can function as an elaboration moderator or WATTage switch.  Test your limits:  how discrepant can you be between your appearances and your actions?

I give no admonition, advice, or argument for any position.  Just think about it for your own benefit.  But follow the Rules.

There Are No Laws of Persuasion.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

It’s About The Other Guy, Stupid.

Persuasion Is Strategic Or It Is Not.

You might have encountered either Fooled By Randomness or the even more popular Black Swan, both written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  I just finished Randomness and see implications from this pop best seller for practical persuasion.

First, let me acknowledge my deeply felt dweebie nature and offer a professorial tut-tut about Taleb’s technical mastery:  He’s got some problems that would require a serious rewrite if these books were intended for a research crowd.  If you’re willing to throw yourself against those rocks, start with a search with the key term, “American Statistical Association.”

There.  I feel better.

Now to the good stuff.

Randomness is a slippery concept that has Alice in Wonderland properties, meaning that it means what the writer wants it to mean depending upon the circumstance.  Thus, randomness joins the blog pantheon of related concepts like Propaganda, Obscenity, and more lately, Strategic Communication.  You need to watch not only the words, but the meanings up the writer’s other sleeve to remain unfooled.

There are two major meanings of randomness.  The first is a highly technical procedural definition:  Randomness is the selection of one object from a population in a way that does not effect the selection of any other object in the population.  Random is not careless, haphazard, or whimsical.  It is a well known process that is observable not only in how you do it, but in what it produces.  Scientists use randomization as a crucial procedure when they select or assign as a means of equalizing samples of participants and materials and their interaction.  Randomization is a fundamental element in science.

The second meaning of randomness comes closer to the street meaning:  The mess of life.  There’s a lot of randomness in the stock market (an area of huge concern in Taleb’s books), for example.  In this sense random becomes synomymous with ignorance, error, and confusion.  Randomness in this sense is a major concern for observational fields like economics, epidemiology, climate studies, evolution and others that share one commonality:  You cannot randomly select or assign key features of the phenomena thereby bringing it under your control.  This lack of control in observational studies always makes it easier to get “fooled by randomness.”  However, and most oddly, you can use the known principles of randomness (see the first usage) as a means of understanding the mess of life.

Taleb rarely uses the term randomness in the first sense (an important procedure of scientific control) and almost always uses in that second sense of random as what we do not know in the mess of life.  You need to keep that difference in mind because Taleb offers many good illustrations of how people think they know something about a large complex system (like public health, global warming, or financial markets) when all they are doing is reading the tea leaves.

With these two different uses of the term, randomness, now clear, let’s consider the persuasion implications.  I see two.

First, most of what I write about is based on persuasion research that uses randomness in that first sense.  Researchers employ random selection and/or assignment as a means of controlling persuasion variables.  While one can still get fooled by randomness in this way, replication tends to point out the failure very rapidly.  That is, the first time I do an experiment, I may get bad lucky in my random selection or assignment and create biased outcomes that vary strictly as a function of my sampling or assignment and have nothing to do with the persuasion variable.  However, the next time someone replicates the experiment (and they will), randomization effects are more likely to be obvious as later studies fail to replicate findings.  Thus, the knowledge we generate about persuasion through this approach is more likely to be true (reliable, general, valid, useful) than research that never uses the approach.

Second, a lot of daily practical persuasion can be understood within Taleb’s point of view.  Practical persuasion usually occurs in a large complex social system of many variables that have a lot of randomness in their interaction.  We may get fooled by randomness when we achieve a desired outcome and think it was caused by our persuasion skill when it was really just a rare, unique, and chance combination of variables that no one understands and will probably never again recur.  If you never carefully test your persuasion principles against the Rock of Randomization, you will almost always be Fooled by Randomness.

In either case, randomization and its uses illustrates my Rule:

There’s a difference between persuasion, and smoke and mirrors; with persuasion the illusion persists.

This Christmas morning as I gazed out my window I spied this surprise.

Our sweet kit Zeus up a tree with my sweet wife providing encouragement.  A neighbor dog seized upon the joyous holiday confusion to slip his owners and take a run through the woods giving an unexpected gift to Zooey.  Here’s his closeup.

It doesn’t get much worse for a kit on Christmas morning.  Until it starts to rain.  (Of course, he got cold, wet, and more importantly, hungry, and is now back in the house.)

We’re doing a larger gathering this weekend, so we just exchanged a couple of gifts today.  Melanie always likes perfumes and lotions.

And I love Kurosawa!

Merry Christmas to all!