[Neurons] 2014 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #11

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2014 #11

March 17, 2014

Creating a Self-Actualizing Company #5

 

UNPEELING THE ONION

OF ABSTRACTIONS

 

When I first arrived in Egypt, I was talking with some of the Neuro-Semantic
Trainers and we got talking about the articles which I posted here on
"Neurons" about former CEO of VISA, Dee Hock and the way he went about
inventing what he wanted- "a brand new kind of organization."  One of them
asked me several very pointed questions:

What do you think was the core skill that enabled him to do what he did?

What set him apart in being able to think through all the web of
abstractions and get to the heart of things which others were not able to
do?

 

I had not thought of that question before, and so I didn't have an immediate
answer.  Yet because all of us were "thinking aloud together" and engaged in
collective learning, as I talked out my thoughts, I discovered the answer.

"What Dee Hock did was an essential and basic NLP procedure- he
de-nominalized the abstractions that defined the banking industry until he
got to the heart of the matter, and finding that enabled him to understand
'the real business' that he was in and from that create new processes.  What
did he actually do in the process of de-nominalizing?  He pulled the
abstraction apart, got to the underlying processes (or verbs) and he
described this as "peeling the onion."

 

When I was then asked what that meant in his case and how he did that, I
went took out the book and read some passages.  And doing that made me
realize two things: first the power of de-nominalizing and second the
advantage of calling it "peeling the onion."  Now if you have read the
Meta-Model of Language (The Structure of Magic, 1976, 1977) or my book
(Communication Magic, 2001), you know that when we de-nominalize an abstract
term we are finding the hidden verb inside of a word that sounds like a
"thing."  This means we move a term from sounding static, unmoving, fixed,
frozen, etc. back to a dynamic process of actions and activities.

 

"Relationship" becomes relating and now we can ask question to index who,
when, where, how, in what way, etc.  "Leadership" becomes leading and we can
now find the specifics of who is leading who to what and in what way.
"Self-esteem" becomes esteeming one's "self" with value and worth based on
some value-system or criteria.  What de-nominalizing does linguistically is
to return to our perception the energy, dynamics, and aliveness to the world
that had become frozen.  And doing that puts return change and choice into
the picture.  It empowers us to be able to do something rather than just
suffer the predetermination of a frozen, staid world.

 

If that's the power of de-nominalizing, then giving it a name that's more
dynamic and descriptive.  And that's what the metaphor "peeling the onion"
does.  Thinking about words and ideas that are "thick," "abstract," and
"complicated" as the layers of an onion suggests that we can get to the
"core" of the idea and make it more simple and direct as we do the
"unpeeling."

 

Hock did that first with "money."  He asked himself, 

"What is money?  Money is not coin, curency, or credit card.  That was form,
not function.  Money is anything customarily used as a measure of equivalent
value and medium of exchange.  But what had that anything become?"  (p. 121)

 

"Money" began to be represented as coins, then centuries later by paper as
"currency" then as checks.  But what is the essence of "money?"  "I
continued to peel our onion of understanding looking for the essence of
money."  Slowly it dawned on him that money had come to be represented as
alphanumeric symbols (numbers, letters) recorded and transported on
valueless metal and paper.  But still- a gap in understanding.  

 

Why?  Because "symbols themselves have no value."  Further, anyone could
write down letters and numbers!  Then an awareness:

"Money had become guaranteed alphanumeric data expressed in the currency
symbol of one country or another.  Thus, a bank was no ore than an
institution for the custody; loan, and exchange of guaranteed alphanumeric
data." (p. 122)

 

Now while that was technically correct, Hock was still not satisfied with
it.  He still needed to know: What was the essence of what happened when we
use a telephone to authorize a credit card transaction?  Data was being
transferred.  Yet nothing has passing through the telephone.  All that was
happening - actually- was "a disturbance of electronic particles- waves of
energy."

"Peeling this onion of understanding was enough to make us cry.  The essence
of money seemed to be everywhere, yet nowhere.  We had to understand."

 

With alphanumeric data moving around the world in the form of energy waves
via telephone, computers exchanging information, what is money?  What is a
bank?  Wouldn't that make any institution which could move and guarantee
alphanumeric data as people would expect- a bank?  The next peeling of the
onion asked, What is the nature of the banking business?  The answer to that
came as three functions:

1) Identify buyers to sellers and sellers to buyers so that an exchange
could be made.

            2) Guarantee and warrant to buyer and seller they system of
exchange.

3) Originate and transfer value data as messages in the form of alphanumeric
data.

 

The conclusion?  "We were really in the business of the exchange of monetary
value." (p. 125).  So "credit card" is a misnomer based on banking jargon.

"The card was no more than a device bearing symbols for the exchange of
monetary value.  The fact that it took the form of a piece of plastic was no
more than an accident of time and circumstance."

 

In the end, the peeling the onion of the conceptual terms that had long
defined that industry enabled him and others to completely rethink their
business and that led to designing new structures and inventing many of the
pieces of "an entirely new organization."  NLP introduced this in the
Meta-Model of Language as the de-nominalizing process and it is an
incredibly powerful process as it opens up new perspectives and facilitates
creativity.

 

 

 

 

We are now Receiving the Registration Forms

          For Coaching Mastery for ACMC credentials--- Colorado, July 2014.

          Write for the Brochure if you are interested in Module II and/or
III

          meta at acsol.net 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

                Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

                Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

                1 970-523-7877 

                Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


     

    

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