16.1. Natural operating modes: a functional concept

Natural operating modes, as a functional concept (MO.O.N.), primarily have the intention to apprehend human and, if necessary, animal and botanical activity, according to a processual, dynamic, useful and continuous principle. We have suggested this concept to go beyond those put forward by the words “talent” and “intelligence”; the latter seem constricted to us, because of an intellectual exhaustion of the resource of words and their history. This is the danger of the “rhetorician”, who becomes a slave to the words he/she uses and locks his/her mind into the ideas contained in said words; then, obstructed by the “view” of ideas projected on the world, he/she becomes incapable of re-founding the resource of the word and consequently of the underlying concept. Ideology is the name of this process. By explaining a word too much, one smooths the wrinkles that are supposed to represent an aspect of reality.

IMPORTANT.– A person does not “possess” talent or intelligence. “Talent” is not a “what”. It is therefore not a quantity that can be measured, despite the efforts supported by certain models of thought that are indisputable from their point of view; it is a sum of abilities that we have grouped together under the so-called natural operating mode family. Measure, let us repeat it one last time, is only determined by the point of thought, or in the case of reality, the point of space and time from and to which an abstract symbol is applied (the figure, the number, the mathematical ideogram). Measure thus stops the view on a point, where the assessment forces the glance to be tilted between a sum of points in movement in time and in space. Let us keep Aristotle the Moderate’s adage in mind: “In the measured thing, nothing appears outside the measure”.

Decision-makers in the company and in organizations (whether private, semi-public or public), with regard to the issues at stake, are faced with at least three choices:

• – the first choice is to continue with the old and classical model, that there exists a group of people who are “superior” to the others. Thus, there would be “remarkable-brilliant” people on the one side, and “stupid-idiotic” people on the other (if we take the extremes of the Gauss curve). Classical, efficient, legitimate and professional tests make it possible to measure these typologies;
• – the second choice is to move classical thinking toward a new model that is no longer centered on a hierarchy of man (vertical and mathematical), but on the principle of a diversity of natural and intentional operating modes, responding to a utility in a configuration, with regard to potential;
• – the third choice could be the “transition” between the two. According to these decision-makers, it would be necessary to (still) have “normal” people, in the sense of an (ordinary) social conformity, while integrating an evolution of thought models.

The observation, study and assessment of thousands of people, on the one hand, and the study and investigation of two scriptures (alphasyllabary, syllabary) and consequently of two models of “thinking”, on the other, offered us resources that were possible to potentiate. We emphasize that the natural mode of operation (producing “talent”) says nothing else of human specificities, such as the structure of the body in its sensory, organic and cellular complexity, of the cultural and configurational impregnation, as well as the knowledge and skills acquired in a conscious and unconscious way (by permeation of images, sounds, smells, etc.) by the person. To live in a country of mountains is not to live in a country of plains; the same goes for a country at peace in the eyes of a country at war. It is the same in the company. Depending on the configuration, the positive and negative potential, and the utility (C.U.P.), the leader will no longer be able to use-rethink performance in terms of “personalities”, but in terms of natural and intentional operating principles that can be detected and assessed in a person, as well as in a group of people.

Although we processed the MO.O.N.s in isolation and in appearance, we have never lost sight of the three principles mentioned upstream of our development:

• – coherence, such as the naturalistic MO.O.N. and the extra-personal MO.O.N.;
• – correlation, such as the scientific MO.O.N. and the naturalistic MO.O.N., or the interpersonal MO.O.N. and the kinesthetic MO.O.N.;
• – combinations, such as the intrapersonal MO.O.N. and the mathematical MO.O.N., and also the kinesthetic MO.O.N., for example, despite the rarity of such combinations.

These three principles, expressed with the Chinese particle “er” (and), are to remind us that nature is “playful”, but fair; that is, humans, just like animals and plants, deploy complex skills and abilities that are useful for the environment in which they evolve. Every MO.O.N. can therefore correlate and is potentially combinable and coherent with one or more others. This is an important point that allows us to revisit the study of the brain. In fact, the principle of correlation makes it possible to apprehend operating principles by studying the brain in its entirety and not in certain “parts”. Field experience leads us to insist on the principle of correlation, that is, the tension between at least two units, two modalities and two indications among them.

The difficulty encountered by “young profilers” is their sequential analysis logic, in other words the principle of an analogical type of questioning without seeking the link between two minimum indications. Correlation amounts to communicating, in the Chinese sense of the term (tong), principles belonging to the same categorical families so that they “match”. For example, we cannot correlate the word “visualize” with the word “analyze”, especially if the person has brought objects or evidence of accomplishments involving the spatial MO.O.N., where analysis, in the sense of a logic of pure abstraction, comes under the mathematical MO.O.N. We prove a MO.O.N. when the semantic, operative (motion-processual) and functional (observable and assessable result) indications show a categorical reliability. To put it in a graphic way, a person cannot have two right arms (except natural exception, etc.).

16.2. Core components and assessable principles

Assessment principles are core components, in other words the functional (computational) principle of a natural operating mode. It is therefore not possible to say that a person “has” interpersonal intelligence solely on his/her ability to be sympathetic with others, or the fact that he/she “knows” how to unite. Declaring is not evidence. What we call evidence is the bundle of indications that can no longer be “doubted”. These are sought and then rigorously assessed by observation and by the practical advantage observed. In our training courses, future profilers are trained to provide evidence of their hypotheses by observing (probing, listening, recording, emulating) observable and assessable facts that can be correlated. Neither intuition nor “wild” empiricism has a place.

NOTE.– A body of evidence is always in light of a concrete and processual production brought by the person, as well as by the configuration in which he/she evolves. The latter are assessed in reality and emulated situations. We have observed and participated in situations where people, who are considered “idiots”, displayed specific skills and abilities which were useful and rare in their combinations. As we have said, what is not named does not exist. These people are not noticed, because the so-called “assessment” modalities by which they are “seen” amalgamate and confuse declarative (ontological) concepts that explain what a person is, with observation competencies that explain how that person operates.

The double Sino-Western study has allowed us to put our evidence on the question of talent and intelligence under tension. This tension has contributed to re-founding these evidences by resourcing them. This was, for example, the case for mathematical, linguistic, naturalistic, extra-personal and interpersonal MO.O.N.s. This work has also led us to address operating modes apart from a comfortable attempt at ontologization and psychologization. It would have been comfortable at all levels, including in terms of writing and word choice, but it would have only prolonged inappropriate concepts. In fact, evoking a phonetic-figurative type of core component is much less comfortable than writing semantic-grammatical. However, if we were to consider a possible universality, a term from which we take a “pinch”, then it would be appropriate to work from a type of thinking whose gap with ours is wide enough to prevent us from making rapid, secure and reducing analogies. To say it with an unusual word, to avoid any transduction, in other words to make an analogy unrelated to an initial rule.

To our knowledge, within the context of our work, there is no “identical” person; hence, the normative generalization concerning talents and intelligence seems “stupid” to us, in the sense of stupidus, “inertia of thought”. The contents of following table, which is a summary of the ten MO.O.N.s, must neither be read nor thought of in isolation from each other, but as coherent and combinable characteristics of the human species, which can be correlated. There are, we believe, more “platypuses” than we might have thought.

In our dynamic table of MO.O.N.s (see the Appendix), we integrate a place for an “X” MO.O.N., as long as it meets all of the criteria we have proposed. The investigation of each MO.O.N. has been, as far as possible with regard to the intention of this work, according to a double transcultural and transdisciplinary principle. The fact that a unicellular organism is able to “calculate” an itinerary, wherever plants may deploy “learning” abilities, must lead us to a humility of the place of the human on the planet, as well as to fundamentally rethinking the concept of intelligence. This is what we have tried to achieve.

The company (and this is the potential (che)) we offer that can reinvent performance without harming the planet or humans. As we write this sentence, in front of Platform 28 of the Gare de l’Est in Paris, at 6.10 pm on Monday, October 17, 2016, we cannot fail to imagine the possible ironic or friendly smile of the reader imagining our sweet naivety. If there is naivety, it is that which is inherent in the availability of potential. As for the reality of the companies and the people who work there, there is no naivety on our part: we know the slightest issues, the strategies and the models of thoughts which are discussed there. However, since Edison invented the light bulb to replace the candle, perhaps it is possible to envisage something other than “intelligence” or “talent”, their conceptual “twin”, to think of the human in their sum of skills-abilities. Perhaps it is not time to remove the candle, which has charm and utility, but rather time to propose an ulterior solution, one whose light allows us to revisit some unexplored areas of humanity.