Definition of Contact Requirements

I thought it might helpful to insert a reminder of what is meant by the term "contact requirements."

As stated in the Program Review Report Template:

" [Contact requirements are] commitments made to the people we serve without precondition. Examples include: 1) Advisors will greet each student with a smile and call them by name. 2) The research office promises to requests in a format that is user friendly, etc.l "

Contact Requirements

On Wednesday, February 20, 2008 the librarians met yet again to work through matters concerning the Library Program Review.

This was the statement that we came up with. There was a belief among some that this should be integrated with the [revised] mission statement.

In order to connect learners with knowledge, the Richland College Library staff:

... Focuses on user needs.

... Delivers expert, friendly, welcoming service.

... Provides a high quality collection of print and electronic sources.

... Facilitates the learning of information literacy skills.

It was further stated that measures for the past 5 years could be derived from the following sources: Noel Levitz, CESSI, Campus Quality, and the Annual Student Satisfaction Survey that the library conducts. For the information literacy item these sources may provide support: Knowledge Checker, 2003/2004 –, Class Quizzes, Comments, and Certificates.

The Rule of Six

Excerpt from A Leader's Guide to Reflective Practice by Judy Brown, 2007

One night at a party, a group of us began talking about “TheRule of Six,” a Native American thought-pattern that I have found useful in my work with organizations, as well as in my personal life.

Others around the table had also found the idea very useful in work situations, and asked if there was something written down on it. I said I didn’t know of anything, although undoubtedly the Native wise woman, Paula Underwood (author of Who Speaks for Wolf and The Walking People) who taught it to me, has written of it somewhere in her work. Years back Paula had provided a seminar for corporate leaders and consultants to help us understand what the Native American tradition might teach us “corporate types” about the nature of change. One of the most powerful lessons was “The Rule of Six.” So I promised to put down on paper my (mid-Western, non-Native) understanding of “The Rule of Six” for whatever use folks could make of it.

How does The Rule
of Six work?

When we are trying to figure out something perplexing (for
which we often use the term “a problem”), or when we are facing into
uncertainty (for which we use the term “change”), it seems natural to our Western
way of thinking to quickly try to find the right answer to questions like this:
“Exactly what is the cause of this? What’s
going on here? How are things going to
unfold? What is likely to happen? What should be our plan?”

Many of the most heated arguments, whether within our ownheads, or among colleagues or with family members, are about who has the one right answer to those questions before us.The “Rule of Six,” a Native American thinking process or discipline,requires that instead of coming up with one single answer to the question (which comes, of course from the story we tell ourselves about what is going on), we instead come up with at least six possible, or good, stories about whatis going on. And then having done that, we hold all six stories in our head, and do not choose among them.

This is very hard for the Western mind. Even when we think of two possibilities, it
is for the implicit purpose of having those two possibilities fight it out,
until one wins. Thinking about more than
one cause of an event or more than one possibility of an outcome is, in our
mind, simply an invitation for us to quickly choose the right one. In fact, we move so quickly from what we observe, to the story we tell ourselves about the observation, to a conclusion,
that we hardly realize that there is a space between what we see and the story
we tell ourselves about it. We go from
perception, to story, to conclusion in a nanosecond. We collapse awareness into action as if they
were a single thing.

The Native tradition, by contrast, holds that there is a
generous and open space after we notice something. And that is the space within which to hold
many possible interpretations, or causes, or developments.

The ability to hold six possibilities in our mind
accomplishes several things. It keeps
our perceptions open to a wider range of data; it allows us to be “systems
thinkers” seeking multiple roots of causality in multiple dimensions of a
situation; it keeps folks from having to fight with each other about who is
right at a time when they should be listening with curiosity to why each other
sees things differently. And since we
are not forcing ourselves to invest our ego in a single “best” idea, we
naturally become more flexible in our thinking, and if our “favorite” of the
possibilities doesn’t turn out to be born out by the unfolding of data, we can
more easily shift our emotional commitment to another idea which in the course
of time has proved stronger. And we can
make that shift earlier and more easily.

So in a sense, the Rule of Six allows us to make necessary decisions,
yet remain aware and realistic, more flexible in our thinking, present to the
world and to the thoughts and perceptions of others, and perhaps even more
compassionate with ourselves when we are “of two minds” or more, about
something.

A personal
discipline to increase “rule of six” capacity

My friend Dawna Markova (author of No Enemies Within and I Will
not Die an Unlived Life) has taught me a walking meditation that I use when
I am struggling with something, which can serve as a companion to “The Rule of
Six.” It goes like this. You walk, alone or with a friend, and say,
“What I notice is this…” “And the story
I tell myself [ab]out it is that…” “What
I hear is this…” “And the story I tell
myself is that…” (On the one hand, and
one the other hand. On the one foot,
literally, and on the other foot.)

Having worked on the mental discipline of observation,
story, observation, story, you can begin to work on the discipline of multiple
stories: “What I notice is…” “And the
story I tell myself is…” “Another story
I could tell myself is…and yet another story I could tell myself is…And a
fourth possible story is…”

This meditative discipline enlarges the space between the
perception and the story, or judgment, or decisions. And it increases our ability to see many possible
stories, and hold them all, in the same way “The Rule of Six” does.

A link between the
Rule of Six and Scenario Planning

This year in a course I was teaching on the leadership of
non-profits, we began to see the way in which the Rule of Six was like
“scenario planning,” the process made popular in the book The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz. Scenario planning requires the mental
discipline of going out in time (five or ten years) and looking back to the
present moment, then telling five or more stories of how events unfolded in
vastly different ways, for a community or an organization. (It was Royal Dutch Shell which first used
this thinking discipline to “prepare” itself for the surprise of the 1973 Oil
Embargo). One is required to name the
various stories that unfold, and to make sure that one is an “unspeakably
awful” alternative, and one is the current “favorite” and that a range of other
possibilities are developed in great detail.

Having developed those stories about the unfolding of events from a
present moment toward a future yet unknown, one has then accomplished several
important shifts in mind-set:

―One has spoken the unspeakable, and
therefore lessened the grip of unspoken fears about the seemingly awful
alternative;

―One has found ones own place, or role,
within a range of possible futures; and one can see that all are survivable, or
even have unexpected plusses;

―One has identified certain key
“events” or “surprises” that would indicate that one or another scenario is
unfolding, and one has lived that scenario fully enough in one’s mind to be
able to step quickly into the surprise (that is the Royal Dutch Shell story);

―One can see that there are certain
“no-brainer” actions that need be taken immediately under any scenario, and one
is energized to do those things. This
breaks the usual trance which uncertainty engenders: Often the uncertainty
about the future keeps folks frozen waiting for the clarity they believe they
need in order to act. But no matter how
great the uncertainty, how dire the straits, there are usually certain good
things to do, no matter what. As a
friend of mine in Detroit often says, “I can’t know who will head the company
tomorrow, but whoever it turns out to be, it will have been a good thing,
today, to have made perfect quality car parts and shipped them to the customer
on time.”

The natural world
reminds us of the Rule of Six

I have found that it is one thing to know intellectually
about the Rule of Six, and another thing to be able to live it naturally, when
we feel pressure. Still there are
reminders of the wisdom of the Rule of Six everywhere in the natural
world. When I was recently on an Outward
Bound canoeing expedition, I caught myself wanting to figure out in advance the
“right way” to get down the river. Day
after day I learned there were always multiple paths down the river, and the
better of the ways only became evident as we were in the canoe on the river.

If you have done any farming you know that when the crops
fail, or you have bumper yields, there are always multiple reasons: weather,
soil quality, soil preparation, pests, seed quality, timeliness of harvest.

The best natural reminder of the Rule of Six came to me
recently, with perfect serendipity. I
was working with colleagues who head a retail business, and we were sitting at
the picnic table in front of my house, on a sunny day, talking about the Rule
of Six, and how it might inform the strategy for their 25-year-old
enterprise. The neighbor’s cat sprang up
on the table and began walking all over our papers, nuzzling folks for
attention, purring. Up and down the
picnic table, pacing back and forth, purring.
I kept pushing her out of the way.

Finally a colleague asked me the cat’s name. I pointed to her funny paws, with the six
fingers, “Six,” I said, pushing her aside, yet one more time. “The cat’s name is Six.” We burst out laughing.

So now, I am trying to keep my eyes open to the many ways
the natural world provides us with evidence of the power of the Rule of Six.

I welcome your thoughts about these ideas, and any
experience you have using them.

P.S. I faxed this
note to Paula Underwood, and she liked it and sent me in exchange, left brain
and right brain versions of the Rule of Six.

The Rule of Six:
For the Left Side of the Brain (Written by Paula Underwood)

For each apparent phenomenon, devise at least six plausible
explanations, each one of which indeed
explains the phenomenon. There are
probably sixty, but if you devise six this will sensitize you to how many there
may yet be and prevent you from focusing in on the first things that “sounds
right” as The Truth. Disciplining
yourself to think in this way—maybe this
is happening, but on the other hand, maybe that
is happening—keeps you from being rigid in your thinking, which in my tradition
is considered to be extraordinarily counter productive.

Now you assign a personal probability factor to each
explanation. This probability factor
will be based on your personal experience.
This is all you have to go on.
Someone else’s probability factor will be different because their
experience is different. You will
understand this. This is OK. It is inevitable.

Each of us has different experience and, therefore,
different estimates of probability. This
personal probability factor can never be 100%―and
never, never 0%.

You see how it is?
How all conclusions are wisely tentative, as new information may come in
at any moment. Yet, whenever a decision
is necessary, you can instantly and clearly select between your top three
probabilities. All, we hope, above
95%! Decisions are, thus, enhanced and
expedited, while the mind is kept alert to new possibilities.

The Rule of Six:
For the Right Side of the Brain (Written by Paula Underwood)

When I was even younger than I am now and brought my
thoughts to my father, he would often say, “Remember the Rule of Six.” Yes.
The Rule of Six. So inculcated in
my nature by now that I have great difficulty in naming only one thing as the
root cause of anything else.

For life is like this: So many individuations acting and
interacting at every identifiable moment, that nothing at all, no one thing,
can cause anything else.

The Rule of Six says, “For every perceivable phenomena
devise at least six explanations that indeed explain the phenomena. There are probably sixty, but if you devise
six, this will sensitize you to the complexity of Universe, the variability of
perception. It will prevent you from
fixing on the first plausible explanation as The Truth.

And so it is, in a complex and changing world in which the
past affects the future, but the future also affects the past, at least in that
our understanding of the probable determines many of our decisions, provides
signposts along many diverging, converging paths.

What we see when we open our eyes…depends on where we are
standing at the time. Only move a
little, to left, to right…gain the view from there. Tell me now, my Brothers, my Sisters, what
does your New Vision show you? Move
around the Circle of the Earth once more…and look again! A quarter turn to the left. A quarter turn to the right. Sit in the East and study life. Sit in the South and wonder. How is it to view the world from Moscow? Leningrad? Vladivostok? How from Durban? Cairo? New Guinea?

We are all Earth’s Children, and each view has value.

Now turn the Wheel on its edge, my Brothers, my
Sisters. How is it now to view Life…as
Wolf? As Eagle? As those with a Hundred Legs? Crawling, walking, swimming through
Life… How is it now?

Complete the Circle in three dimensions…and then we will
talk. Kind Thoughts Come.

The Rule of Six
and the Imagination (Written by Judy Brown)

December 19, 2000

Today, Michael Jones, writer, pianist and composer, and I
were talking with appreciation and sadness of Paula’s passing on December 2 of
this year. And of her gifts and
wisdom. I asked if he knew of the Rule
of Six, and when he said “no,” I sketched the idea, briefly. I said that usually, when we Westerners and
non-Indigenous people come up with alternative explanations, it’s in order to
kill off all alternatives except the one “winning” alternative. Michael laughed and said that when the imagination senses that’s the game, the imagination says, “No way. I’m headed for the country for the day. Let me know when you’re finished behaving
like this.” And so our alternative
thinking lacks imagination. Paula’s Rule
of Six invites the imagination back into the game, into the creation of
alternative perspectives and possibilities.

Each day dawns

Each day dawns

With its own

Discoveries and
surprises,

With its gifts.

If we are home

To all of that

We can’t be lost.