Certainty via a Tree of PH-L2 Centres

Framework

This Tree guides you in refusing to give up so as to make your project succeed and produce achievement following severe failure.

This account is not a full exploration of psychosocial issues. It's purpose is to demonstrate that THEE is a model whose exploration generates findings that did not go into its construction. The specific aim is to scientifically validate conjectures developed in relation to the reversal of the oscillating duality and the identification of Root Level pressures of presumed biological origin. See more here.

Approach to Exposition:  The Tree emerged fully developed and so the usual logical methods of exposition are not appropriate. See more here.

Note: The main Certainty level in this emergent framework appears to be KL6: Formation because everything depends on asserting your autonomy to make changes and so separate yourself from others who would give up. It may help to read this part first.

The Tree Spine

Seek Guidance at KL7 by Respecting Signals
Take Heart at KL4 by Feeling Good Believing
Find Energy at KL2 by Relying on Images
Make It Happen is at KL1 by Activating Procedures

There appears to be a move from an abstract perspective on reality down to a practical drive for tangible engagement with events. The two extreme Centres seem externally-oriented: at the top (KL7) you make yourself dependent, at the bottom (KL1) you make yourself self-reliant. The other two Centres seem internally oriented: the upper (KL4) provides a continuity, the lower (KL2) provides an adaptability.

In this central spine, the yourself v your situation duality is fused.

More about the Balanced Centres & Vertical Channels in the Spine

KL7: Seek Guidance → Certainty via Selflessness

KL7_B: Respect Signals (PH5-L2)

Signals are specific messages with an unambiguous meaning. Signals may be emitted by yourself (e.g. your physical or mental state, repetitive thoughts), or evident in your environment. They may come from close at hand (e.g. family, co-workers, helpers &c) or from the wider context (e.g. new enabling technology, new legislation &c). Ignoring an unambiguous message is a mistake. Those messages must lead to changes that make a difference.

Certainty and Selflessness

Because signals are unambiguous they are a prime source of certainty. However, a dispassionate selfless attention is essential because the message may frustrate personal wishes or disrupt expectations. If signals do not get the necessary respect, they are rationalized away or denied, and soon get lost in the myriad of difficulties that the project faces.

Signals may also be missed or misunderstood through lack of attention. Whatever the cause, missed signals mean your energies get misdirected. Meanwhile others, who are dispassionate, see the signal all too clearly and are likely to lose confidence in you and your project.

When is a signal a signal? 

Signals are part of communication-PH5 where understanding is the critical requirement. You should be able to conclude whether or not a particular event or series of events is a signal (rather than a sign or symbol or 'just one of those things'). For example, receiving a rejection is almost invariably unpleasant, but is it a signal that your offer is poor, wrong or bad? Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't e.g. in publishing, numerous best-sellers have been turned down repeatedly before finally being accepted.

Respect for signals allows you to focus self-imposed changes-KL6_Y, and demands that you create situational modifications-KL6_S. Signals will also challenge your beliefs-KL4_B.

KL4: Take Heart→ Certainty via Well-being

KL4_B: Feel Good about Believing (PH7-L2)

To succeed, you must not just believe in yourself, in your project, and in your approach, but feel good about it. In the present situation where there is usually social opposition, you must also believe in the value of what you are attempting for others outside your inner circle: your community, customers, wider society, even humanity.

More on Belief, Certainty and Well-being

This feel-good believing must not be blind or self-serving. It is after all a form of willingness. Rather you must expose and explore your beliefs: question them, check them, investigate them, debate them. Only if your beliefs go through the fire of calm reflection, intense scrutiny and relevant criticism are they worthy of making you feel good, and capable of providing enough certainty to make success likely.

Your intense belief is also fundamental to your well-being and the well-being of others who become involved in your project (e.g. as supporters, workers, investors). Just because you believe, does not mean others have to agree or understand why. But your unwavering belief provides an absolutely vital sense of comfort and confidence for those who associate themselves with your project.

What about Negative Self-Beliefs?

Many people have irrational beliefs based on childhood experiences. These ideas may be inappropriate and grandiose, but mostly they are about being incapable, unloved or unwanted. They commonly focus on irrational fears about others or possible consequences. This is the opposite of feeling good. If such beliefs intrude, they deserve to be properly explored and reflected upon, but then they can and should be dismissed. That is not to say you stop feeling you are always doing the wrong thing (a feeling you have probably had since childhood), you simply don't regard that belief as relevant to the project in hand. It is more difficult if you have a tendency to pessimism (which you call realism), because others may misconstrue this.

Believing commits you to impose changes on yourself-KL6_Y, and it gets support from the new environment-KL6_S that you create. Believing requires you to become realistic about the project concepts-KL5_Y, and it gets acceptance through your appreciation of outsiders' concepts-KL5_S. Feeling good via beliefs is powerfully boosted by your promotion of benefits from the project's outcomes-KL3: benefiting others-KL3_S develops credibility, while benefiting yourself-KL3_Y is encouraging. As you look for guidance, your beliefs challengesignals-KL7_B, and in looking for effects, they energize your vision-KL2_B.

KL2: Find Energy → Certainty via Certainty

KL2_B: Rely on Images (PH4-L2)

The project must come alive in terms of images of all sorts because they are the most intense generator of certainty in eventual success. It is not just a vision in the sense of a goal or value, but an intense experience. You need images for how the project is going to proceed, how the outcomes will look, how the benefits will spread. You should picture yourself already achieving results, and visualize getting the job done. You need images of what others will or could do. Although these are your images or at least you are primarily responsible for evoking them, others must be able to see them in their own mind's eye as well.

Use Materials to Concretize Images

It is usually helpful to produce graphs, block diagrams, 3D models, or take photographs. However, note that a photograph that is simply symbolic (e.g. a sunrise representing a new beginning) may be unhelpful because it's lack of concreteness confuses supporters and sows distrust in sceptics.

Images that you rely on will energize your beliefs-KL4_B. They should reaffirm those outcomes identified for yourself-KL3_Y, and be aligned with support for outcomes benefiting others-KL3_S . They must confirm (and be confirmed by) the easy-to-envisage procedures-KL1_B.

The key mechanism here is vision: effective leaders demonstrate the confidence to present a vision despite doubt, confusion and fear around them—and this is widely regarded as needed for successful group achievement. See more.
Note that this Centre contains the certainty element (PH-L2) at the certainty  level (KL2)  in the Tree.

KL1: Make It Happen → Certainty via Performance

KL1_B: Activate Procedures (PH1-L2)

Given the likelihood or expectation of failure, it is not possible to have full confidence the effective action will accord with plans and schedules. Much greater certainty comes from following procedures. But these steps should only be activated when the time is right or success will be unlikely or even wasted.

Procedures contains steps that can be visualized. So the channel between procedures and images should be open and provide confirmation that you are on the right track (or you get early warning of trouble). They channel (and are channeled by) outcomes benefiting others-KL3_S, and constrain (and are constrained by) outcomes benefiting yourself-KL3_Y.

What if the procedures fail to deliver what you expect?

That would be a direct blow to your certainty and confidence, and will surely undermine the support from others. It suggests that something is seriously wrong with your capacity to manage an implementation of a simple sort with well-understood expectations. It might suggest faults higher in the system e.g. in the promised outcomes, in your concepts, or even in a crucial belief. Most seriously, perhaps you ignored signals that were flashing red or avoided necessary contextual changes.

The Bi-Polar Levels

The other three levels—KL6, KL5, KL3—have two Centres each: these must take heed of each other and connect to the Centres on the spine.

KL6: Establish Your Position → Certainty via Autonomy

KL6: Enable Forms (PH3-L2).

You have to take up a new position in regard to your project. That means autonomously instituting changes that you alone are responsible for. You believe in the project so that does not need significant alteration. However, given that others do not support it or you, and failures to date are not encouraging, something is obviously going wrong. Your independence of mind and readiness to assert yourself in the face of opposition and evidence is therefore fundamental. You must determine what alterations are called for to bring you centre-stage and get others on board. As you are part of your situation, there needs to be some reciprocity between what you impose on yourself and what you now require of the situation.

KL5: Clarify Your Thinking→ Certainty via Understanding

KL5: Clarify Concepts (PH2-L2)

Others will wonder what your project is about. So you need to go back to the project ideas and extract those concepts that define it. You should do this for yourself as well as for others. Only if you understand thoroughly, can you be certain. Certainty in understanding also lets you explain what you are attempting in a clear pithy way. Your explanations of your own project necessarily influence what others think, but the reverse should also hold. While the two perspectives differ, there should be a complementarity.

Note that concepts differ from outcomes. Concepts-KL5 are an essence of the whole, necessarily more abstract and general than the tangible and often conventional benefits intrinsic to strategic objectives-KL3 e.g. Henry Ford's revolutionary concepts were "a car for the middle classes" "mass production" 
"consumerism" while his outcomes were the usual and desirable: "cheapness" "reliability" "profitability".

KL3: Why You Persevere → Certainty via Acceptability

KL3: Promote Strategic Objectives (PH6-L2)

The project needs desirable feasible outcomes that maximize impact (i.e. strategic objectives). These are the rationale for persevering with a project that seems to many wrong-headed, doomed or impossible. In refusing to give up, you must identify and promote those outcomes. Their acceptability will give you certainty. However, there must also be outcomes that make your own effort worthwhile. Again the criterion is acceptability to yourself. Supporting benefit for others must take into considerationbenefit for yourself, and vice versa; but value for others must come first.

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• See how the framework may be used (or misused).
• Further notes on this framework.

  OR

• Continue to Bypassing Others' Resistances: the Tree of PH-L3s from PH7-Willingness that helps you establish your ideas as sound.

Last Updated: 24-Mar-2014. Last amended: 22-Jan-2015.