Misapplication of Statistical Measures

The reform petition calls for "balancing statistical and numerical measures of performance (for seminar leaders, introduction leaders, ILP participants and others) with measures of the quality of participant experience." This post is intended to illustrate the background and value for this key reform.

Currently, Landmark measures the performance of seminar leaders by statistics such as the numbers of guests, registrations, and attendance at each seminar session. Introduction leaders are measured by number of registrations. Provider programs, ILP, TMLP, course supervisor programs and so on measure "effectiveness" by guests invited and registrations. There is relatively little effort spent on directly guaging participant experience or the participant's own measure of value from a course or introduction. Landmark uses measures to drive numbers instead of using measures explicitly to optimize authenticity or participant value.

The reform movement sees that a central driver of inauthenticity and pressure in Landmark is a misalignment of incentives. People will optimize what they are measured to optimize at the expense of other measures so organizations must take care to align the incentives they provide with the end goals of the organization.

As an example of the critical role that appropriate incentives play in organizations, consider teh story of an automotive industry company that measured its managers by their ability to keep parts inventories low. The idea of using parts inventory levels as a measure was to reduce waste, to have the managers order only the optimal amount of parts needed to build and fill orders.

Some months later, a barge heading down a nearby river struck a pile of auto parts. The factory managers faced fluctuating demand that made it impossible to keep inventories near zero and still meet customer demand, so they did what it took to keep inventory low and excel in their performance measures. They dumped excess parts in the river before each measurement day.

A misapplication of incentives, intended to propel the company forward, instead created waste and loss. This is a simple story told in a graduate management course, teaching future leaders to beware about how they measure their employees and managers. Any management instructor will advise that human beings in organizations respond to the incentives they are given, even when those incentives don't line up with the goals of the organization. The message is, choose your incentives wisely.

As with the company using inventory as a measure, the measures Landmark is choosing to use today are at the source of profound losses in its effectiveness. We're no longer talking auto parts. We're talking about spreading the good stuff of transformation. The result we observe is that course leaders are overdoing the guest and invitation conversations to meet their measures. We observe that statistics are filtering their listening, impacting their stands, distorting their perceptions. Those who need to be a stand for an amazing experience for all participants are dealing with countervailing incentives that draw them away from authenticity, instead to make the case for being in their seats and bringing guests.

Harry Rosenberg, CEO of Landmark Education, wrote of surprise about participants feeling pressure, even in introductions where there were no opportunities to register. The pressure is built into a system that has its providers measuring their interaction with guests by statistics instead of by the quality of that interaction and by the quality of the experience of the participant. When the people in the room need registrations to be considered effective, the participants will feel their pressure and feel their inauthenticity. The misapplication of statistical measures drives feelings of pressure and inauthenticity in many areas of the organization. This is why reform of the way statistics are used has drawn such attention in the Reformers Yahoo group, and why it is central to reform.

A renewed Landmark will not have its leaders treat participants as statistics and will not give incentives to course leaders to do anything but provide value to participants.
We believe that there is no need to focus on numbers when one has a conversation of power. No need for pressure where people come together to do good for each other. With the right incentives and with a new spirit of openness, we will see a dramatic elevation in the atmosphere of the organization.

The Hazards of "Agreement" and Implications for Reform

In writings in the Reformers Yahoo group, I have mentioned how "agreement" among those immersed in Landmark culture or a "culture of agreement" can have a negative impact on the organization and on participants outside of that agreement. This post is intended to elaborate and clarify those statements so that we can powerfully drive reform in this area.

Agreement in this context is not a good thing. It is not the same as consensus building.

What is meant by "agreement" in the context of the reform and renewal of Landmark?

Agreement in this context indicates something that a group's members in general accept as what's so, perhaps with supporting evidence, but not with anything approaching incontrovertible evidence. With agreement, to fill in where facts are insufficient, there is a degree of faith or wishful thinking or "manufactured agreement," which is agreement that arises through repetition and positive reinforcement of certain themes and/or social censure or dismissal of dissenting viewpoints.

Later in this post, I will suggest some of the agreement that I have observed around Landmark. That an agreement is listed here does not mean that all immersed in the culture believe it or that the agreement does not match with what is so (sometimes agreement fits what is so, sometimes it does not). Listing here simply indicates agreement that is largely shared and frequently repeated in Landmark.

The dangers of agreement include:

1) Getting Agreement Wrong
In agreement, people sometimes accept as fact what is not so, which distorts their choices. When one is confused about what's so, one does not have the correct menu to choose from.

2) Intolerance
Hearing views outside of the listener's agreement leads to a "something is wrong here" feeling in the listener's mind, which disempowers the listener and can also lead to negative or intolerant behavior. Examples include the listener being defensive, making the dissenter wrong (directly or by suggestion or implication), or repeating agreements as fact in an effort to counter or disempower the dissenter.

3) Group Think
Individuals allow social pressure to conform to agreement to impact expression and/or belief.
Impacts: Inauthenticity, lack of full self expression, loss of power. Group agreement can appear cult-like. Those outside of agreement are disinspired to remain in the community.

Examples of agreement:

Agreement: The Landmark Forum is THE vehicle for spreading transformation.

Agreement: Landmark is not about making money.

Agreement: Landmark does about the best job humanly possible of self correcting.

Agreement: Landmark does about the best job humanly possible of spreading the conversation of transformation to others.

Agreement: Sharing about Landmark and enrolling others is an essential or inseparable part of the curriculum and the process of mastering transformation.

Agreement: Landmark leaders are of the highest integrity.

Agreement: Taking complaints/problems up the organizational hierarchy is THE way to resolve them. Discussion among third parties is counterproductive.

Agreement: There are good reasons for Landmark to be a for-profit business, not a non-profit.

Agreement: There is something wrong with someone who maintains a criticism of Landmark even after they've communicated fully with Landmark staff.

If you find yourself wanting to defend these statements (saying to yourself, "that's not agreement, that's reality" and then running through the evidence in your already always listening), that's a sign that you have a stake in the agreement. A person who is simply comfortable with what is so and who is open to other points of view does not feel compelled to defend. If you feel the urge to defend, take a look at your evidence and consider what assumptions you rely on in believing that the agreement matches what is so. Then for every agreement listed above, write down a "What's so Statement" for that issue that you know (as if your life depended on it) is what's so. The what's so statement may be much more uncertain than the statement of agreement. To be clear, I am not saying that the above "agreements" do not match with what is so. I am saying that people act as though these things are so without sufficient knowledge, and that people have an attachment to these agreements, which results in the negative consequences outlined above (see dangers).

In terms of reform, our task is to reform those methodologies and items in the curriculum that generate agreement.

Examples of agreement manufacturing at Landmark:

Agreement Manufacture: Collapsing Landmark (especially taking The Forum) with transformation in conversation.

Agreement Manufacture: Especially praising, applauding, and rewarding those who bring or register guests (often using meaning making terms like "amazing" or "miracle").

Agreement Manufacture: Public making wrong of Landmark critics (they don't get it, have deep problems, or have other agendas).

Agreement Manufacture: Meaning making around "transformation".

As noted above, agreement runs counter to full self expression. Agreement is disempowering. Agreement breeds intolerance. Agreement breeds group think.

Agreement has people be small. In the end, agreement turns off those outside of the agreement, which includes the throngs of prospective participants who have not yet heard the conversation of transformation.

Just as we have called for the reform of methodologies that unnecessarily create a sense of pressure, for us to create an open and welcoming Landmark that works for many more people, we must also reform training and curriculum and methodologies that manufacture and perpetuate agreement.

The Reform Conversation, Work and Inspiration

I was at a beautiful Landmark event recently and conscious of the difference between the feel of being in the reform conversation and the feel of being in the good stuff of the conversation about possibility.

The bottom line is that the reform conversation is about the vessel that brings possibility to others. It's about structure, methodology, policy. This is not (directly) a conversation about possibility, and it's especially not a conversation about possibility for us (we who work for reform) because it's not about us, not about what works for us, not about what we like.

This conversation is not intended to be fun (...except when we make side comments with smiley faces). :-)

Hopefully you get something out of the reform conversation for yourself, such as a fresh perspective on one aspect of Landmark or another, light shed on something that had been a blind spot, awareness of where you may have been out of power and possibility, etc. People also find value here as a clearing for discussion that is intentionally free from both Landmark agreement and the stridently anti-Landmark posts seen in some of the public Landmark sites. These benefits can stand on their own to make this conversation worthwhile, but in the end, they are not what this conversation is about.

Borrowing from the introduction of the Yahoo reformers group, the group is here to "discuss and coordinate actions to reform the Landmark structures and methodologies at the source of some negative perceptions, consistent with the possibility of Landmark as an open, welcoming, extraordinarily effective engine of powerful living for all." If I may inject a little story, this is work. Hard work.

This is one of the factors in why it can be challenging to enroll those who don't see the costs and pitfalls of Landmark's current methodologies into the reform conversation. From Landmark agreement (see post on Hazards of Agreement), the reform conversation looks like work, negative work, unnecessary work, no play, no joy.

The core joy and inspiration for participating in the reform effort derives from a couple of sources. First is reducing or eliminating the negative impacts that we have discussed, which on its own is a very substantial contribution. Second, and even more powerfully for me, the joy and inspiration for participating here comes from creating a future where people who yearn to live powerfully and live a life they love have easy access to a powerful conversation for transformation, with no sense of pressure, no sense of weirdness, no fear of manipulation...whatever it is that keeps people away today. Easy as going to the park on a Spring day like today.