that one visionary manager had volunteered several examples of the way that the evil of all evils had forced his hand. he had mentioned more than twice how that one corrupting calculation had constrained his decisions to the realm of illogic. i could see that he was bought in. others around the table nodded in agreement, and a few just looked on. but that one manager had seen the light. he was thoroughly convinced. i could only hope that he wasn't the only one.
We'd finished the current reality tree just two weeks earlier. We'd finally scrutinized all the connections. We'd discovered just the right wording for every entity, no matter how insignificant. We'd snaked our way through the labyrinthine likeness of the organization's cause and effect relationships to discover the root of all evil, and this manager recognized it for what it was. he was bought in.
but what about the rest? many others also saw the core problem. but some just didn't get it. many just didn't get it. Damn!
so what happened? why was one so thoroughly convinced, while others were barely in agreement? i would puzzle over this for weeks to come, until i picked up edward deBono's book.
"The mind is a self-organizing information system," debono spoke into my mind's ear as my eyes read his words. "We used to think of the mind as a static system, not unlike a tray of sand on which one might drop steel balls. on such a tray each ball would simply make a dent and stay put," he said as one such ball made a crater in my own mental sand.
i understood deBono's words. after a baker's-dozen years of building mathematical models i was well accustomed to abstraction. the tray of sand was easy for me to see.
"But that model was wrong," continued debono as a gust of thought blew both tray and sand beyond the horizon of my mind's eye. "A more accurate model of the way we think would be a thin, elastic membrane," assured deBono. my field of mental vision once again found focus as he continued, "If we drop a ball on such a membrane, it makes an indentation," he said to me as one shiny steel sphere sagged my own mental membrane.
how clearly i could see the pale yellow sheet and the trumpet-shaped depression that surrounded the big ball bearing!
"Each experience, like a ball on a thin membrane, shapes our perception of future events," debono warned. "Just as the final resting place of the next steel ball is influenced by the depression made by the first one, so our interpretation of events is shaped by past experiences."
i could see so clearly that second piece of spherical steel, first bouncing upon the stretched sheet and then slowly rolling nearer to its shiny companion. but would only that second ball move, all by itself? what about the first ball, would it stay put, or would it's position too be affected by the second ball's fall? i had to find out.
i built deBono's model within the hour. a simple cardboard box, with an open top, held stretched not a rubber sheet but a very thin plastic sheet. i had to settle for the plastic. not a single rubber sheet existed in all of Whippany. and the balls.... i struggled with the balls until i thought of the mouse balls in my desk. No! i hadn't mutilated any of God's furry creatures. I'd simply disassembled some old computers' pointing devices. Soon, deBono's model of the mind stood before me in all its glory and scotch tape.
Carefully, i picked up the first mouse ball and placed it on the thin plastic sheet. just as I'd expected, its weight caused the sheet to sag, creating the anticipated trumpet-shaped depression. Then, i reached for the second plastic rodent's missing sphere. i placed it inches from the first and waited. Immediately, the second ball dimpled the plastic sheet too, and it stood still. but after a few seconds it began to gravitate toward the first, and just before the two balls met, the first one moved slightly, only slightly. but it moved!
if deBono's model was true to life, then not only could our past experiences influence our perception of the future, but future events could sway the conclusions that we drew from past events. the first ball moved. it no longer resided in its old familiar spot. the mind whose membrane i was dimpling with the spheres of plastic rodents could be changed. it could be altered by events as yet unfelt. i was about to let my mind cavort with these new concepts, when the telephone demanded my attention.
"There's no rope," said the voice of my friend from the promised land. "The problem is that there is no rope in the system," he repeated, speaking of the world in which i spend most of my waking ours.
to my astonishment, i realized immediately what i had known but had not noticed. he was perfectly correct with his observation. in my world, there was no practical limit to the amount of work that might be expected of employees. projects came at a rate that appeared limited only by the annual budgets. in the terminology of the buffer drum and rope crowd, it could be said that there was no rope. of course, neither was there a buffer nor a drum. but most certainly, there was no rope.
we chatted briefly after he'd dropped that elephant-ball from orbit, directly upon the middle of my own mental membrane. he had a knack for this kind of target practice. were i to really try, I'm sure that i could recall the pleasant words that were exchanged. but that one phrase is in no danger of being forgotten: "There is no rope in the system."
that one massive ball now lies at the depths of an abyss in my membrane, and it pulls toward it untold numbers of smaller spheres. deBono's model was dead on. not a single older ball that had decorated my membraney brain remained unaltered. they all now felt the pull of my distant friend's phrase. Suddenly, like that bought-in manager, i could see it everywhere. there was no rope in the system.
after fifteen minutes of a long-distance chat, i returned to my version of deBono's membrane of the mind. the two mouse balls were still there, of course. but there was something different about the plastic. its trumpet-shaped depression was more visible. the two small balls had made a much deeper impression with time. Now, their influence on future balls would surely be more pronounced. the likelihood of their being influenced by the fall of future balls, too, was significantly diminished, due to the deeply set-in manner that they'd adopted over time. i thought of the managers whose support was lacking. They'd been with the organization for many years. that one erroneous measurement had pressed its shape into their membrains for more than a decade, and our analysis had failed to dislodge it. it hadn't even nudged it. would i need another elephant-ball? i was fortunate. the new york museum of natural history was displaying its dinosaur exhibit.
(C) tony Rizzo, 2026. [email protected]
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