Marketing

Marketing can be described as the activities required to persuade a client to perform a certain act or transaction through identifying and meeting the client's needs. In this case, even though the pilot study had already been approved by Singapore Prison Services for implementation, it was equally, if not more, critical to buy-in the end client, namely the inmate audience. To achieve this buy-in and ensure a high level of understanding, heavy customization of our TOC materials was required to meet their needs. Details of when, why, what, and how the marketing was done is detailed in the next section.

Up Front Buy-in

Successful buy-in of the inmate audience was critical to the success of this project. Typical TOC trainings commence with a brief marketing overview followed by a presentation of process skills. This approach is fine when the audience already recognizes the value of TOC, for example AGI Jonah or Goldratt School participants who have opted to invest significant time and money on a course and are further along the buy-in process. As a complete contrast, our inmate audience knew nothing about TOC except that it would help them escape from the monotony of their cells.

For such a mandated audience, a strong buy-in as opposed to a marketing overview is crucial to ensure the right attitude toward the course is adopted. In a typical social work setting, it takes many sessions over a period of months to establish trust and rapport, which is not always a given either. Unless the trainer has something that the clients want or they feel the trainer can help them with, they will not buy in. In business, a similar problem but to a lesser degree is encountered with staff attending trainings to merely fulfill training hours or management instruction. Unless they truly value or buy-in to the subject matter, it is not a sustainable process. Adequate course time must be allocated for buy-in, which unless performed successfully up front, impedes on the depth of the process being understood and taught.

While it may be argued that the buy-in can be achieved progressively throughout the course, our experience has shown that it is more effective at the onset as TOC is a process that requires concepts to be understood in a sequential manner. Even for the "converted," TOC, with its own set of rules and vocabulary, is often regarded as a tedious process, and requires a certain level of stamina to master. Layer One of the TOC Layers of Resistance (Identification of the Problem, see Chapter 20) must be established early, otherwise a serious compromise is made between the quality and quantity of material learned.

Motivation for Buy-in

How do we motivate an audience to buy-in to TOC? The marketing buy-in for TOC behavioral applications is vastly different from that of business applications. Unlike business applications, where management is motivated to implement TOC for higher profits and employees are obligated to follow instructions as part of their job, it is far more difficult to convince another individual, in the absence of any immediate tangible benefit, to change a behavior that has been developed over a lifetime. What could motivate someone to change the way he thinks, behaves, and reacts, especially within such a short time period?

The goal of TOC is to challenge our way of thinking, behaving, and making decisions. The paradox lies in the logic that in order to motivate change, one needs to prove that there is a need to change. For a thinking skills program, this implies that existing thinking is flawed or suboptimal. (Anyone who has tried to correct their spouse, even with the noble motivation of improving their relationship, will empathize with this task!) Without accepting or understanding that there is a need to change, this creates resistance, fear, and distrust. Before we can market something new, we need to prove that their existing approach may not be optimal and complete this task in a nonconfrontational and nonthreatening manner.

The Buy-in Process

The marketing process contained five steps: 1. Communication. The first step of the marketing process was to find a way to communicate with our target audience in a manner that they could easily relate to and understand. As buy-in was critical to program success, we needed to ensure our message was clear and relevant to their needs. In addition to the internal focus group sessions conducted with officers and inmates within Singapore Prison Services, we consulted with a number of ex-inmates and their families, counselors, employers, prison fellowship church groups, and charitable organizations involved with prison rehabilitation to gain a wider and deeper understanding of their personal, home, and work environment viewed from the eyes of different interest groups. Again, one of the most effective ways to gain considerable insight was through the simplified use of the TOC PRT framework of identifying obstacles through informal conversation.

2. Customization. The next task was to customize the buy-in in relation to overcoming constraints in the workplace because our ultimate measure of success was job retention upon release. The significance of the workshop title, Reintegration, with regard to both family and society, was selected to engage their interest as pre-release inmates. Although it was obvious from our research that it needed to be a personal paradigm shift, refocusing the course title on work rather than self allowed them to concentrate on the process rather than worry about how they would be viewed by others. Conceptually, the learning process was the same but it would be less intimidating and raise less negativity during the buy-in process.

3. Validation. In the course of buy-in, a number of directed activities and exercises were designed to challenge their thinking by disproving their logic in a nonthreatening manner. Linking the activities together was the ongoing need to ask the underlying question "Why?" which is also the lowest denominator of the TOC TP. As to be expected, the practice of questioning every action in daily prison life is not high on the list of skills encouraged in a correctional facility, and to reawaken this questioning ability after years of incarceration was like trying to crank a car engine that had been left in the garage for years. Once started, however, it was raring to go and difficult to switch off again.

Indirectly, the aim was to prompt and question the logic and clarity of one's own thinking process and belief system. Learning to question self, though, can lead to harsh realities. The key was to downplay the underlying self-directed activities under a common reintegration theme, which eventually led to an open discussion as to the validity of their own thoughts, words, and actions in a reflective and yet fun-filled and collaborative manner. The training bonus was the resultant vivid transformation of a group of wary individuals to a bonded team who could openly laugh at themselves and at each other without a sense of embarrassment or loss of face.

4. Secure Environment. By creating a secure and safe learning environment for the inmate audience, we could encourage and maintain open dialog without fear of mockery, judgment, or reprimand within a closed confidential circle. For this same reason, we decided to conduct the course without the presence of any "uniforms" or prison staff in the classroom. (The obvious concern for the trainers was a safety issue but our fears proved unfounded after being well equipped with shrill alarms and constant closed circuit television surveillance monitoring by the prison officers.) 5. Time Allocation. Of the entire 18 hours allocated for the workshop, approximately one-third or six hours of the content went into the buy-in process. The remainder of the time went toward teaching three selected TOC TP tools-the Evaporating Cloud (EC), Logic Branch, and Prerequisite Tree. From a planning perspective, it was agreed from the onset that the number of tools taught would be sacrificed for more buy-in time if, as, and when necessary. We strongly felt it was more important that the audience, many from a low educational background, left with strong foundational skills rather than a sketchy recollection of three tool processes. Fortunately, this compromise never took place. Conversely, the more time that we spent on buy-in, the faster the teaching of the tools went. For most participants, this first 6 hours proved to be the most invaluable part of the course.

Why is it so hard to answer the question why? Ironically, as many TOC for Education Inc. practitioners will agree, it is much easier to teach the same TOC tool to a child than to an adult. The purity of the answer to the question "why" seems to diminish in proportion to age. Likewise, it is the same when training a group of lower level employees versus senior managers. Why should that be? After much deliberation on this topic, I can only concur that our minds become so overloaded with information that it becomes harder and harder to extract the core essence of our thoughts, which TOC tools help us do so perfectly. Unlike children, our words are so intertwined with political correctness and societal expectations that eventually over time the true meaning is no longer communicated.

Course Materials

From a course developer and trainer's perspective, the end goal was to ensure that the learning was sustainable. In the absence of any immediate tangible benefits to the user, the problem was not so much in teaching TOC processes given the high logic component in Singapore education, but how to ensure continued behavioral application under stressful situations when the need for TOC is the greatest yet automatic default behavior takes over in the flight for safety and security.

Over the years, a common observation from local TOC courses conducted in a variety of corporate, school, and social services settings by experienced TOC trainers was the relatively low adoption rate after the course. While a certain percentage of buy-out is expected after training, it was surprising that a high number of those participants who seemed clearly bought in during the course rarely applied TOC afterward. Despite glowing feedback reviews and excellent process skills, few participants seemed to apply the tools on a regular basis after the course.

After contacting a number of past course participants, many admitted they enjoyed the course but felt that the TOC processes were too tedious to repeat. The compulsory use of TOC terminology to derive the logic such as "in order to . . . I must . . . because. . . ." and "if . . . then . . . because" and its rigorous process steps were considered too time consuming for regular use. While most felt the concepts and processes were relatively easy to grasp, they were not prepared to invest time and effort to practice and use TOC for daily issues that they believed could be solved intuitively without the need for any special thinking tool.

For others, they found it difficult to find appropriate daily opportunities to practice the tools. Not every decision they faced required a logic branch nor represented a fullblown conflict and not every conflict required a resolution. While some may argue in TOC circles that everyone has conflicts, it also depends on the severity and the outlook of the individual for the tools to be relevant. As a result, even when participants bought-in to the concept and were able to apply it effectively to case studies provided during the course, the knowledge faded after the course either due to a perceived lack of opportunities to practice or a subsequent buy-out after finding the tool too time consuming to use for daily problems.

Given these existing constraints facing our "educated audiences," it was critical that we find a way to prevent "mental indigestion" for our inmate audience who were likely to find the processes even more difficult to use and practice within the narrow confines of prison life. Two fundamental questions needed to be answered, namely: 1. Was it possible to distill the TOC tools into their core components to simplify the learning process further?

2. How could we expand the opportunities for TOC participants to practice and use the tools?

With these questions in mind, we needed to create simple TOC materials applicable across age, education level, and language with easy applications to daily life.

Core Content

The TOC TP Tools are based on two types of logic-necessity and sufficiency, and the concept of win-win. Rather than launch directly into the mechanics of the tools, however, for the reasons mentioned previously, we decided to teach these principles first to simplify the learning process. Once these principles were well understood, the ability to apply the tools would subsequently fall into place.

Teaching Necessity Logic Both the EC and PRT tools are founded on necessity logic. Both are read in an "In order to....we must...because..." format and the validity of their cause-effect relationships depends on meeting minimum necessary requirements. In many instances, we saw amazing breakthroughs through the use of these tools, but their full application is intended for more significant issues rather than to overcome daily run-ofthe-mill decisions (e.g., choosing between buying apples or bananas), although the necessity logic underlying both types of applications is the same.

The underlying logic is straightforward. Every action that we take is driven by an underlying need. As shown in Fig. 27-8, in order to make logical decisions, we need to: 1. Question the validity of that need, 2. Check whether there is a better way to meet that need, 3. Check the underlying assumptions if necessary.

FIGURE 27-8 Cloud with common objective, needs, and wants.

Differentiating between Needs and Wants To teach necessity logic, we focused on the main component of the TOC Evaporating Cloud-the relationship between the "need" and "want" on either side of the conflict. The first step was to teach the importance of needs over wants using many different group activities such as basic budgeting, needs analysis, or demonstration games like the Potato Experiment (see shaded box). Considerable time was spent on this topic, as understanding this concept was central to learning subsequent TOC TP tools.

The Potato Experiment

Props Required-One clear plastic container, one bag of mixed potatoes ranging from large to baby potatoes, one bag of uncooked rice, and a 1-L bottle of water. Show only the plastic container and potatoes.

1. Ask a volunteer from the audience to fit as many potatoes into the container as possible, preferably in order of largest to smallest. They will soon realize that the trick is to insert the largest potatoes first and then intersperse the gaps with the smaller potatoes. Now ask the class whether the container is full to which the answer will be yes.

2. Reveal the bag of rice and ask another volunteer to pour as much rice as possible into the container. Once done, ask the class whether the container is full to which again the answer will be yes.

3. Finally, reveal the 1-L bottle of water and ask another volunteer to pour the water to fill the remainder of the container. Once again, ask the class whether the container is full to which the answer will be yes.

4. Let the container stand for the remainder of the training session. Over time, you will observe the water slowly being absorbed by the rice grains, which become enlarged and in turn force the top layer of potatoes to slowly pop out of the container. (Point out to the class how fast and easy it is to pour the rice and water into the container compared to the difficulty in fitting in the potatoes. Once everything is added, it is very difficult to remove the wet rice, which sticks to the potatoes and container, and even more impossible to remove the water upon absorption.) 5. Ask the class what they learned from this exercise assuming that: Container = our life Potatoes = our needs (sized in order of importance) Rice and Water = our wants

Lesson of the Story

Our lives, like the container, have a limited capacity so we have to choose carefully what to include. Even when we start with a very clear focus and sense of priority as to what are our "biggest potatoes" or most important needs in our life such as love, family, freedom, we are often distracted by the "rice" and "water" or non-essential wants such as pride, popularity, and easy money which can take over our lives before we realize it.

As a result, we must constantly prioritize what we choose to put into our lives and protect our underlying needs. Over time if we are not careful, our needs can easily become dislodged by our wants, which grow in false importance and impact on our thoughts, words, and actions. We need to clearly define our needs and make sure they are well grounded in our life to prevent being overshadowed by non-essential yet competing wants.

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Identifying Underlying Needs Once the audience was able to differentiate clearly between the concepts of wants and needs, the next step was to enable them to understand the relationship between a want and its underlying need by asking the question "why?" While this step was relatively easy for our inmate audience, who had already internalized the practice of questioning and asking "why" during the first few sessions of buy-in, the main difference now was teaching them to evaluate the logic of their answer by using the TOC terminology and framework "In order to . . . I must . . ."

A typical illustration is a smoker's desire for a cigarette (want) whenever he needs to relax (need). If the need for relaxation is validated, the next question is whether there is any other way to satisfy that need. Unless he can find another way to satisfy this need through other relaxation techniques (for example, to exercise, chew gum, or listen to music), smoking remains his default action. When we opt for one action over another, the implication is that this is the only way to meet this need at that point of time; that is, In order to relax, I must smoke.

To many, the absoluteness of this wording is difficult to accept. The usual response will be a retraction or a disclaimer that no better options were available at that time. Once again, we need to question whether this is true. The irony is that while we have the freedom of choice to exercise actions that are more appropriate, we simply choose that which is familiar. By default, we do not question our actions because our responses have become automatic after years of practice. From our experience, this is a sure way to meet our need, regardless of whether it is the optimal action to take.

In the classroom, there are numerous opportunities for the trainer to let the audience practice this skill. Focusing on actions, enables the audience to practice necessity logic in a far wider range of situations than conflicts. Most people only have a limited number of conflicts at any one time, while desired actions are plentiful and easy to identify (e.g., why buy a new hand phone, why eat an extra doughnut, or why go on vacation). Even if nothing else is learned for the remainder of the course, the benefits of learning to question one's actions by challenging one's belief system before acting is immeasurable.

Validating the Need One of the most powerful exercises that we conducted was to ask the audience to write down their crime (want) and then ask themselves "why" (need) they committed that crime. Typical responses were: At first, their answers were assured and confident. However, upon deeper questioning as to the validity of their need using the TOC questioning framework "in order to...I must," the surety of the answers began to waiver. In almost all cases where money was the stated need, it turned out to be not for real financial woes but to address self-esteem needs such as to show off their wealth, to prove their loyalty to gangs, to impress others by being "the man," as well as for the Rolls Royce of all needs-to obtain "easy money" or put more bluntly-to avoid hard work.

In order to obtain easy money-I must commit crime Now behind bars, the rhetorical question for inmates became whether in fact, because of their crime, they met their need to show off or enjoy their easy money. Sitting in a circle on the hard concrete floor, the group conclusion was that perhaps easy money was not so easy after all!

Others, who committed a crime to fill their need to impress their friends, were suitably chastened when they admitted that their negative peers, whom they sought most to impress, had completely disappeared after their arrest. Instead of admiration from their peers, the result was avoidance. Only their family remained to support them through their incarceration.

In order to impress my friends-I must commit a crime This invalidated their original need by teaching the hard lesson that their need to impress may have been directed to the wrong party, leading to the wrong action.

Finding an Alternative Way to Meet the Need If the need is validated, we need to question whether there is any other way to fulfill that need before taking action to achieve the desired want. The objective is to open their minds to different possibilities to fulfill their need. An illustration of one group's solutions to fulfill their ongoing problematic need for money and how to find new (positive) friends is shown in Figs. 27-9a and 27-9b.

Many of our audience were in prison for drug-related crime. Even though they had been "clean" during their entire incarceration, many knew their own weaknesses and worried about their high probability of relapse upon release. When questioned about their need to take drugs, common answers were to feel good or high, to relieve stress, or to experience the adrenalin rush.

FIGURE 27-9a and b Meeting needs of the Cloud by alternative means.

In order to feel high-I must take drugs Was there another way to feel high? One inmate excitedly put up his hand and suggested running to get the same adrenalin rush. Apparently, he had been a school athlete and loved to run.

In order to feel the adrenalin high-I must run Did it work? Upon release, he contacted us several times to inform us that he was still clean and still running! While this was obviously not the solution for all, it emphasized the importance of finding an alternative way to meet the need; otherwise, the tendency is always to go back to default behavior.

In a case of theft, one inmate shared that he stole a $30,000 luxury watch after trying it on in the shop and admiring it on his wrist. His need for stealing the watch was to look cool and impress his girlfriend.

In order to look cool-I must steal the watch Was there another way to look cool? Standing there in his decidedly uncool prison uniform and rubber slippers while sharing his story, it suddenly dawned on him that there were other ways, such as changing his hairstyle or becoming a good dancer, that he could have looked cool and impressed his girlfriend.

Practice examples were by no means confined to reflection of past experiences. Everyday actions were perfect to practice necessity logic. On one occasion when TOC course time happened to clash with exercise yard time, one inmate angrily rushed up to a prison officer and threw his file on the floor. Fortunately, no charges were made but when questioned why he behaved in such an aggressive manner, he explained that he wanted to get the officer's attention.

In order to get the officer's attention-I must throw my file on the ground When asked if there was any other way to get attention, he sheepishly shuffled his feet and murmured that he could have waited until the officer was free. Although the rest of the course still clashed with yard time, he became a model student.

In another memorable case, a younger inmate who was due for release the next day had his sentence extended for tattooing his forehead with a pencil. Upon returning to class, we questioned his need to tattoo his forehead, leading to his reply that he and his cellmates were so bored the night before that they did it for fun. The class collapsed in hysterics when he read out from the board, "In order to have fun, I must tattoo my head." Was there no other way to have fun? Today as a free man, when he calls to chat, he reminds me of his hard lesson learned in his quest "to have fun."

Learning to question oneself can lead to harsh realities, making transformative experiences painful to go through. Unless there is critical reflection time, there is no point in attempting to teach the additional process and language associated with the rest of the tool until fundamental principles are understood. Usually one-on-one intervention is required for chronic behavior modification; however, the safety perimeters established within this group were so tight that they were able to lower their tough facade and openly share and see the folly of their behavior from another pair of eyes. A common phrase heard in the classroom was an incredulous, "You did what? Why?"

By breaking down the Cloud process, it also allowed the audience the opportunity to analyze the "why" behind their actions minus the usual accompanying "why not" during the initial learning process. For most adults, our inherent sense of right and wrong is so strong that for most types of negative behavior, the "why not" is already well understood. For this audience in particular, well-meaning family, friends, teachers, and counselors had drilled them with "why not's" since they were young. Like smokers, however, even though they understand the consequences of their actions, few could quit until they could find another way to meet their need.

These are but a small sample of the numerous simple yet transformational situations resulting from asking the basic question "why?" and identifying the core reason behind our individual actions. While it may be argued that these concepts are not unique to TOC, the use of the key TOC phrase "In order to . . . I must" was critical for success. The combination of the three (the need, the want, and the justification) provided a simple yet effective primer for the rest of the Cloud tool, which is essential to deal with interpersonal issues and more significant personal dilemmas that require a more thorough analysis of both sides of the conflict.

Win-Win Buy-in to the concept of win-win is essential to teaching the remaining Cloud tool process. The need for win-win, however, is not an easy concept to sell in the Asian context where it is not common to insist on one's point of view, especially with respect to superiors, elders, or authority. Unlike individualistic societies that thrive on debate and the fundamental belief in the freedom of expression, traditional Asian culture does not encourage direct confrontation because being rebuffed could cause loss of face for either party.

Rather than striving to achieve a win-win situation, it is far more common and acceptable to adopt a strategy to avoid, give-in, comply, or compromise even if it means a win-lose and ultimately lose-lose situation for both sides at the end of the day. To overcome this, once again we needed to disprove their underlying logic before trying to introduce new concepts. To give a sense of fun to the exercise, we engaged in active role-play to demonstrate the outcome of each type of conflict resolution.

To encourage ownership of the solution, the class made a list of all of their existing ways to resolve conflict before discussing the merits and disadvantages of each. Not surprisingly, the most common solutions were avoid, comply, give-in, and compromise. The clincher was in the realistic demonstration of each scenario by self-professed "actors" in the audience, which added to the high recall ability of the exercise for many months afterward.

Examples of role play include: a man agreeing to marry his girlfriend after she threatens to leave (give-in), a prison officer insisting certain actions to be followed by an inmate (comply), a mother nagging her son until he decides to move out (avoid), a husband and wife agreeing to take turns watching TV for 15 minutes each during the final match of the Soccer World Cup and a TV drama finale (compromise). By the end of this exercise, participants are much more receptive to learning about win-win upon seeing the consequence of win-lose.

Teaching Sufficiency Logic Sufficiency logic is the basis of the Logic Branch used to understand consequences of actions and improve half-baked ideas. It is read in an "if . . . then . . . because" or "if . . . and if . . . then . . . because" format to describe why situations exist or why we believe particular actions will result in certain outcomes. The validity of their cause-effect relationships depends on sufficiency.

The concept of cause and effect is well understood by most people. With very few exceptions, every inmate knew the immediate negative consequence of their actions prior to committing the crime and yet still went ahead. What prompted them to act in such an illogical manner? There are two main reasons behind this: 1. Failure to understand the full consequence of actions 2. Failure to validate the predicted effect Understanding the Full Consequence of Actions In behavior, necessity logic is critical to understanding what causes us to act, whereas sufficiency logic helps to validate what we believe will happen because of the act. The problem behind the latter is that it is often determined by our individual experience and intuition rather than from the possession of full facts. If we have insufficient intuition about the situation, then we rely on our limited experience to form an opinion. Based on these opinions, we form behavior patterns that govern how we behave and think.

For example, IF I offend, AND I get arrested, THEN I go to prison.

IF I offend AND I do not get arrested, THEN I make easy money.