Some conditions are extraordinary, requiring more than an intuitive grasp of the current focal concerns and the interconnections of the many constituencies. They require changing those concerns and perhaps the linkages as well. For example, an irrational fear of AIDS must not be accepted or disparaged (which may cause it to intensify), but neither can it be ignored. It must be changed. An uninformed conviction that poor black children cannot learn in school must not be adopted or disregarded. It must be changed. Under such situations, commissioners must sometimes take actions intended to alter focal concerns and to shift power positions. The best opportunities arise when common, normative practices or ideas are in conflict with strongly held ideals and values, as is true currently with smoking and drunken driving but not quite yet with the practice of refusing any contact with AIDS victims. In conversations with some of the leaders of constituencies, the commissioner can often sense both the strongly felt need to change the doubtful practices and the pessimism about succeeding. Comments like the following are typical: "Nobody thinks crime is a good thing, but nobody knows how to stop the fast-spreading crime. Preaching doesn't do it, fines don't do it, jails don't do it, and counseling doesn't do it. What does?"
To induce change, a commissioner may have to openly confront and contend with some constituencies, even those who appointed him. Given a base of power in professional expertise, consistency with cultural values, personal integrity, and articulated public support from some constituencies, a commissioner may accomplish more by confrontation than by trying to create consensus through accommodation. Lawlor points out that the commissioners who have been most successful in their efforts to limit the spread of AIDS (Surgeon General Koop being the most visible) have been those who publicly confronted their political resistance rather than those who searched for areas of compromise.
The studies presented in this book, along with the remarkably well-replicated research of Kurt Lewin, indicate that the commissioner's chances for success are best when an attempt to change concerns and coalitions has these characteristics: (a) The attempt affirms a strongly held value, idealistic as it may be, such as the values of health, truth, justice, and freedom, (b) It is taken in concert with coalitions of constituents powerful enough to influence the actions of others (ideally the most powerful, but not necessarily), coalitions that have a strong commitment to the values being sacrificed and at least a little uneasiness about the value-sacrificing current practices, (c) The action requires a quite specific, readily observable change in current practices, (d) It encourages powerful-enough people to announce their public commitment to make the specific change. Such changes are usually not short-term shifts. The conflict between values and practices is, in time, resolved in favor of the values, and the change is stabilized over the long term, as has been true of buying seed in order to plant hybrid corn, careful use of antibiotics, and immunization of infants. Another example is prisons that cooperate with voluntary agencies to improve the health practices and vocational skills of inmates. Such prisons are tolerated, even though they might be suspected of coddling criminals. But if former prisoners get and hold jobs without much trouble to employers, and if they also commit no further crime, eventually the community may come to take such rehabilitation programs for granted, as they have hybrid corn. Drunk driving has been hard to change, as have smoking habits, but "No Smoking" areas in public places are now well supported. John Glidewell has reported the five-year course of some well-demonstrated induced changes, as citizens attempted to influence the decisions of a school board-changes that once established continued for at least two years.
Again, the task requires recognition of shifting patterns of focal concerns and of changing coalitions. Moreover, if change is planned, the task requires astute alliance with, and concerted efforts by, powerful-enough coalitions to attempt to induce the intended changes in patterns of focal concerns. That knack for pattern recognition is difficult to pin down. Usually it is associated not only with years of experience but also with the ability to filter and organize current information as it relates to that experience. It seems to require a Winston Churchill-like mind that moves easily from logic and form to feeling and sensing, perhaps ' 'sixth-sensing."
Herbert A. Simon has probably given more attention to this trait than anybody else. He reported a comparison of the intuition of chess grand masters and novices. Both are first presented with a position from an actual but unfamiliar chess game with about twenty-five pieces on the board. After a few seconds, the board and pieces are removed. The grand master can usually reconstruct the whole setup, placing twenty-three or twenty-four pieces correctly. The novice can usually place only six pieces. The procedure is then repeated except that the twenty-five pieces are placed at random on the board. The novice again can locate six pieces correctly. And the chess master? Also about six. For the chess master, recall is dependent on whether the pieces form patterns incident to plausible games. The board is not a set of twenty-five pieces; it is an arrangement of familiar patterns with implications for actions.
Although chess masters are often highly analytical, taking as much as thirty minutes to decide upon a move, it is also true that some can successfully play as many as twenty opponents simultaneously, taking only a few seconds to size up the board and make a move. Simon has suggested that the intuition of business managers is similar to that of chess masters, both depending on the same sort of pattern recognition. We suggest that the political intuition of public commissioners also hinges on the same kind of pattern recognition.
Note that we argue for quick, intuitive identification of patterns as a condition for coping with many opponents. The action of the chess master-"the move"- conforms to rigid and widely accepted rules of the game. On the contrary, the actions-"the moves"-of commissioners must conform to rules that are constantly changing; in fact, the "players" often disagree about what the rules are. The patterns to be recognized are patterns of power structures; the rules to be followed are primarily determined by those at the peak of the power structure- unless they become vulnerable to displacement themselves. As the power structure changes and others occupy the peak, the rules change. Recognition of the pattern of changing power structures thus becomes recognition also of the pattern of the changing rules to be followed. The patterns appearing on the commissioner's "board" are always more varied-and the moves require much more flexibility-than those of the chess master.
