History

The Thought and Action Pattern™ Survey and Profile
By Beverly R. Moore

The power and potential of the Thought and Action Pattern™ survey and profile have been evolving over a twenty year period, beginning with a NEED, a DISCOVERY, and a CHALLENGE.  The original need still exists, the discoveries have continued to emerge, and the challenges will now be shared by all of us who seek to grow through tapping our power and potential.  This paper describes the evolution of my work in the areas of thinking styles, the Thought and Action Pattern™ survey,  and, their application to Management Consulting.

THE NEED:
In 1971, I attended the five-day annual Creative Problem Solving Institute at the University of New York at Buffalo and discovered that I had the power and potential to be creative.  I was taught a process which allowed me to experiment in a variety of thinking styles.  Some parts of the process were natural, some comfortable and some a problem for me.  It was there I learned to call a problem a challenge...making it a positive choice rather than a negative barrier.  My experience was so profound that week that I made a positive choice, to turn my learning into a career.  I was challenged to empower others to discover their creativity, as I had done.  My work as a management consultant began immediately thereafter, primarily as a teacher and facilitator of Creative Problem Solving. 

Whether teaching or facilitating the creative process, I always began by having my clients brainstorm and then prioritize the major problems facing their organization.  Two problems always made the top three, and one made first place 90% of the time.  Have you guessed what it might be?  You’re in the 90th percentile if you guessed COMMUNICATIONS.  It might be expressed as interdepartmental communications, one-on-one communications, boss-subordinate communications, communications with our customers...but communication was always up there. 

The other problem to make the top three was MOTIVATION.  “Our people aren’t motivated!” “How do you motivate them!” “We can’t get motivated.”  Though we always produce many creative solutions, I worried that we were treating symptoms rather than the disease.  What caused communications to break down?  What caused unmotivated people?  One of my intuitive hypothesis was that we are all different...we talk different languages...our values are different...but, what causes that?  With this need to find breakthroughs in solving communication and motivation problems, I made a discovery.

THE DISCOVERY: 
Sitting in a workshop at the annual conference of the American Society for Training and Development in 1981, I heard Ned Herrmann, a pioneer in the theory of thinking styles, telling me a CAUSE of what makes us different.  He said it was “how we think”...not “what we think”.  He presented the concept that just as we have a dominant hand, eye, and ear we have hemispheric dominance in our brain.  We might be left brained or right brained.  That wouldn’t be so profound if the hemispheres were as alike as they looked, but I was hearing that they processed information differently.  The specialized process of the left hemisphere was linear and sequential, while the specialized process of the right was simultaneous and synthesizing.  It all started to make sense. 

I went on to study with Ned and became certified to administer the Herrmann Brain Dominance Survey.  Ned’s concept of thinking styles ignited my passion which exists to this day to learn more about “how we think” and what the implications and application are.  Eager to share the root cause of communication and motivation problems, I administered over a thousand Herrmann Surveys and developed many “whole brain” solutions and applications for my clients. 

There is an old saying, author unknown to me, “We teach what we want to learn”...and learn I did, mostly from the people I was teaching.  Among the many discoveries I made were “how we think” also influences: how we plan and organize; how we are perceived by others; how we lead; how we are creative; how we sell; how we relate; and the list goes on and on.  I also discovered that teams and organizations had profiles, too.  Based on the new insights I was adding to my brain-dominance foundation, I faced a new challenge.

THE CHALLENGE:
In 1985 I was challenged to synthesize and integrate all that I had learned by creating the Thought and Action Pattern™ survey and profile –and creating models for managing, training, selling, planning, delegating, and problem solving.  The core discovery from each individual and organization profile is the appreciation of uniqueness and differentiation.  The core challenge is to make our differences be complementary rather than competitive.  The applications we delivered in our related workshops have indeed addressed keys which TAP the power and potential of our clients and their organizations.

In 1989 I contracted with the consulting arm of one of the “Big Six” accounting Firms to work as a facilitator and a process consultant during the development of an internal training program.  The key objective of the school was to provide a common foundation of technical and problem solving skills to all of the consultants across the world.  Every consultant in the Firm, at the 3 or 4 year mark in his or her career, would be expected to attend the school.

I began my work with the development team by administering the Thought and Action Pattern™ survey to the school development team members.  I then taught them how to appreciate and utilize the characteristics of their preferred thinking styles while helping them understand how to leverage the thinking styles of the entire team.  I also worked with the team to help them understand how to operate as a truly high performing team.  The project team was so enthralled with the success they enjoyed by working as a “whole brain” team, they embedded the thinking styles survey into the school and included the creative problem solving techniques that that I had taught them into the content of the school.  Over the next decade that the school was active, I surveyed over 700 consultants from all over the world and helped to facilitate a culture of creativity within the Firm. 

One of the school development team members, Chris Andrus, continued to apply the concepts learned during our time together building the school during his next 13 years as a Management Consultant.  Chris and I stayed in touch over the years and when he approached me to participate with him in his new consulting company, Archimedes Consulting, I jumped at the opportunity to see my “life’s work” evolve in a new direction.  Chris created the web based version of the Thought and Action Pattern™ survey as presented on the Archimedes Consulting web site and created an automated scoring tool.

When asked, “What attribute contributes the most towards being creative?”  Walt Disney replied, “It is the more you are like yourself and the less you are like anyone else which makes you unique.”  We hope that your Thought and Action Pattern™ profile and the insights that you gain from learning about how you prefer to think will contribute to the discovery of what makes you unique.  A Dominican Nun once said, “The more you know who you are, the more you understand others as they are.”  Understanding is a step toward turning problems into challenges, and conflicts into harmony.  TAP your power and your potential...and enjoy the challenge!

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 The Thought and Action Pattern™ Survey is conceptually aligned with the metaphorical “Whole Brain Model” as presented in   The Creative Brain by Ned Herrmann, published by Brain Books, Lake Lure, 1988.

Thought and Action Pattern™ is a trademark of Beverly R. Moore. 
Thought and Action Pattern™ Survey © 1985 - 2007 Beverly Moore.