2.1.1. Transdiscipline-cross-culture: the fruitful side

Our research, interwoven with and through experience, has led us to create a cultural gap to reshape our own evidences. Effectively, while we began work on the question of the operating modes favorable to the actualization of potentials in 2003, it seemed necessary to us, if we wanted to produce a thought resource – that is, a useful material not diluted by centuries of inferences – to go and observe elsewhere how other cultures operate and “think” apart, and not differently from us.

The word gap implies distance and objectification of thought. In fact, the gap “shows” at least two places of observation (which refer to reality). Difference, on the other hand – as a concept – subjectifies things, people and places through the use of distinction (it is necessary to know in order to distinguish). There is a difference between the Americans and the French as much as there is a difference between the Germans and the English, but there is a gap between the Chinese and the Europeans, because the common ground of understanding is not “the same”:

“This thought about the gap takes us out of both easy universalism and lazy relativism: one projecting its vision of the world on the rest of the world, as if it were self-evident, and the other closing each culture in its own bubble and isolating it” [JUL 12, p. 44].

The word talent has been trapped in this “logic” of difference between people, where we seek to produce a gap between these “places of observation”, which, by descriptive process, could be called talent. The gap does not “see”; it forces us to observe where difference is indifferent to observation, since knowledge (itself) is sufficient.

It is here that our epistemological choice begins to part from the knowledge that carries difference: him being better than the other, her being gifted, them being high potentials, him being creative, them being this population with no future, her being useless, them having key talents, etc.

This stance allows us to focus on the gaps between operating modes that produce observable results, and not on people as subject matter. However, in order to succeed – or try to succeed – in this work, we need to widen the gap between two major cultures, the West and China, not to compare them (by subjective opinion) and thus inducing (once again) the “difference”, but rather, to quote Jullien, to produce resources by putting some tension in between these two historical giants. It is a question of fertilizing our models with this heterotopic work (Foucault), that is, to visit existing ones outside our truths, to apprehend other ways of “functioning” and thinking in other realities. Then, through this game of (operative) observation and comprehension, draw inspiration from it to redesign our model. Hence, our epistemological choice over the last 15 years has been to visit, both physically and intellectually, this elsewhere in Asia, particularly China: “Reality is never ‘what one might believe’, but it is always what one should have thought”, Bachelard tells us [BAC 71, p. 158]. In other words, we cannot find anything new in the (comfortable) space that our intellectual lamps can illuminate. When the thought buckles on itself, the inbreeding of cultural thinking is never too far away. It is for this reason that we are not satisfied with the current concepts of talent (and intelligence) in our work. The latter seem to be self-centered, that is, absorbed by their own “truth”. Western thinkers of intelligence and talent, to our knowledge, have not emancipated themselves from their common ground, perhaps because they have never thought about the (obvious) way they think, and from where they think.

Our work on the issue of the “potential of talents in companies” is the outcome of this tension, of this fertility of thought favorable to “new” options apart from the existing ones, like a certain Steve Jobs, who decided in his time with Apple, not to create that “difference” with Bill Gates – Windows – but to create a gap, given that the common ground of understanding would not be the same.

The beginning of our work was made with an epistemological choice (study of knowledge) favoring transdiscipline and cross-culture. These words imply a particular position: that of investigating “beyond” a discipline. It is not in reference to a view of the mind when we use the word position, but to its primary use, in other words: a spatial position, from which it is possible to look precisely at the object of study. Our research on the issue of potential realization strategies combines a study of Western and Chinese thought on the concepts of potential, actualization and strategy. It led us to travel to France, China and Nepal (Humla, Himalayas). These field trips led us to look more than just “see” with our classic models, the way in which people from each culture “translate” reality into operating mode(s). It is from this gap that much of the content presented in this book has been actualized.

The trans prefix sets out the principle of looking “through”, “beyond” and “between” disciplines. Nicolescu reminds us that its purpose is to understand the current world in order to propose a unity of knowledge:

“Transdiscipline relates to the dynamics generated by the action of several levels of reality at once” [NIC 96, p. 67].

Studying the work of researchers in botany, neuroscience, sinology, philosophy, ethology and so on requires a specific discipline that favors this perspective beyond the original discipline: what clues, theoretical and conceptual contributions allow us to deal with our question? Which strategic operation should be deployed to make it easier to update potential? The link with the issue of talent development has developed over time; in fact, “talent”, as a natural modus operandi, only manifests itself if there is potential (see Chapter 4). Contrary to interdiscipline, which favors the transfer of methods from one discipline to another [NIC 96, p. 65] or multidiscipline, which “concerns the study of an object of one and the same discipline by several disciplines at once”, transdiscipline, always worth quoting Nicolescu, “is the transgression of duality between binary couples: subject–object, subjectivity–objectivity” [NIC 96, p. 83]. Transdiscipline and cross-culture are a difficult choice at first glance, because they force us to no longer be “classifiable” or “identifiable” by an academic discipline. This decision leads to another difficulty, that of giving the impression of a possible dispersal or simply a supposed lack of “clarity” with the chosen angle. Transdiscipline examines the between, where a priori there is nothing to “say”. Indeed, there is nothing to say (logos) or to think about in between. The between is not one or the other Jullien says: “the between therefore has nothing of its own, does not have any status, therefore goes unnoticed. However, at the same time, the between is where everything ‘passes’, ‘happens’, may unfold...” [JUL 12c, p. 51]. Hence, this double choice implies a scientific stance of between and not from the point of view of identity (a single great school of disciplinary thought). In fact, how does the one who is assigned the “status” of talent operate between situations where he/she is “seen”; what can we not look at because of our non-presence? What is the difference between what is made out as an “idea” (or ideas) about him/her and the reality by and in which the person (or even the group of people) unfolds-operates?

2.1.2. Looking beyond our cultural and intellectual evidence

Dealing with the question asked by the book by searching-observing in several scientific and geographical “places” complicates the initial question. It could also suggest that we are “disavowing” the great currents of thought stemming from psychology and sociology. This is not the case, but respecting the history of thought does not imply submitting to it. Thus, the testing of evidence is acceptable if we wish to present a specific method that can be practiced, observed and reproduced.

Allow us to courteously recall – in a straightforward manner – that if both disciplines now appear to have both the monopoly of Being and Social monopoly, then neither one nor the other has that of the human being as a species interacting with the world of the Living. The world of the Living is a world of propensity, deployment, operation, mutation-maturation and transformation apart – often – from the human senses, in particular from Western humans. Hence, almost 15 years ago, when we began our first research, we chose cross-culture as a principle of thought and study, because “no culture is the privileged place from which to judge other cultures. [...] Cross-culture is the spearhead of transdisciplinary culture” [ibidem, p. 158; 162]. To want to “universalize” human “talents” by measuring and by Being, based solely on the Western, European and French standards, seems presumptuous to us, hence this gap to potentiate our cultural resources.

The reality (in terms of physicality) observed over the past decade has led us to begin the conceptual and theoretical deconstruction of current models, in order to understand their “ins and outs”. We recall that it is not because something said and written on the word talent is deemed “true” that it is “real”.

Therefore, in order not to lose our way or get lost between disciplines, we have opted for a guiding principle that develops a few questions: what does it show, what makes it possible to observe and what makes it possible to apprehend each discipline studied with regard to the issue of potential, actualization and the modus operandi (talent, skill, “intelligence”)? This disciplinary entanglement, coupled with physical field investigation in the West and Asia (Nepal, China, Philippines), has provided us with a resource to “calibrate” our work. By calibrating, we mean narrowing the gap between observed-correlated results and suggested hypotheses. The ambidextrous dimension of study and its Sino-Western practice offered us flexibility in theorizing and practice. For example, we have relied on the treatise of The Nine Chapters, the Classical Mathematics of Ancient China and, in particular, the use of some 60 characters – among the 331 or so presented in the glossary of technical expressions [CHE 04, pp. 899–1035] – as the principle of data analysis and evaluation for each of the corpora (subject of study) in our thesis. To us, this choice seemed well adapted to such a work; in fact, the Chinese language (syllabary) is a language centered on reality, where our language alphasyllabary is primarily developed for ideas and concepts. Certainly, Chinese thought also develops the so-called abstract thought, but the principle is mainly oriented towards the “process of things”. Such a choice was motivated by the observation that models of sociometry, as well as psychometry, were not very reliable in observing operating modes in real situations, given that their principle is to produce a generality by eliminating the variables. Moreover, the “measurement” involved in psychometry (often) remains mixed up with the notion of evaluation and consequently cultivates an ambiguity that should be removed.

Let us take the shi figure (勢), it designates the situation, the device, the configuration endowed with effect, that is, what initiates from what is available, the potential as a force to be molded in order to benefit from its full capacity and its resource. Recruiting a “talent“ when there is no “potential” favorable to the deployment of one’s skills is a tactical error and therefore a strategic one too. The potential, we will come back to, is neither a property of the person (something in him or her) nor a sub-category of personality (which makes him or her what he or she is). It is a force-carrying effect, such as the sea, the wind and the currents necessary for sailing, independent of the “remarkable” skills of the navigator. This principle is useful when observing an operating mode in a situation, or when looking at how a force supports a natural operating mode. The concept of talent is therefore not defined solely on the basis of its semantic-phonic authority, but on the basis of external factors that are useful as well as necessary for its process.

The term, in its dual Sino-Western instance, makes it possible to make the “talent approach” concrete, rather than remaining in the intelligible and causative analysis of situations and people: “he has talent; he is talented; this person succeeds admirably, (thus) she has talent”.

Let us underline, to begin on this side, the character 溦 (wei). It refers to the slight and, in particular, an approximation such as “slightly smaller” (wei shao) or “slightly too small” (wei duo) in the case of “circumstances where a repeated transaction cannot provide an exact result in a finite number of steps to indicate the part left out, the slight” [CHE 04, p. 1004]. Thus, the notion of wei is most useful when it becomes necessary to observe operative nuances in situations, that is, the in between moments, in general where no one looks or pays attention, where the operation unfolds with discretion.

Wei implies maintaining a vigilant attention to this discretion, which operates in between situations, such as the fencer who in an (almost) systematic way, moves his left foot by approximately 15 cm, while his partner begins to accelerate, supported by an opening of approximately 20°, while a moment earlier (less than a second), his processed gaze was looking at the elbow, and then the wrist of his opponent. The chain of movements that results from this leads him to land a “hit”. Hence, the use of characteristics such as 情 (qing, circumstances, situations in which there is diversity, specifics) 禰...禰 (mi... mi, the more we divide, the finer what is left is), 連 (lian, add, link elements in space), 類 (lei, category, classify according to what they have in “common” and their possible interactions) and 化 (hua, transform, metamorphose) has provided us with a major resource in the development of our protocol and in the observation (view/listening/kinesthesia – sense of movement) of the MO.O.N.s (natural operating modes).

This work has enabled us to adjust, complete or even modify the categorical system of “forms of intelligence” proposed by Howard Gardner, but also to move away from the Sternberg model (compartmentalized intelligence). It has also enabled us to agree on the modalities by which certain operating modes correlate with each other. Hence, for example, interpersonal intelligence, from this angle, cannot correlate with intrapersonal intelligence, but rather with kinesthetic intelligence. The arguments will be put forward in the section relative to the interpersonal MO.O.N.

This work led us to question and then reconsider the concept of emotional intelligence popularized by Goleman from Gardner’s work, not in what he implies as conceptual (the idea in his cultural approach “functions”), but in his common ground and in his emotional and relational postulates, as a “starting point” to justify the said “emotional intelligence”.

2.1.3. Re-engineering the seemingly “finalized” resource

Chinese thought, since the legendary Five Emperors (about 2600–2100 BC), has developed notions that allow us to understand the field of visible and non-visible nuances (the figurative process), such as mutation-transformation (yi hua), circumstances, situations (qing), slight, lightly (wei), configuration, figure (xiang), situation, procedure/situation, device, configuration (shi) and problem (wen).

Thus, if the Western abstract refers to the world of ideas and objects of thought, the Chinese abstract (kong), as proposed in The nine Chapters, refers to a willingness to associate them with events-situations of reality. The Chinese abstract refers to the detail of operations (their understanding) in the context of a specific problem. It enters if necessary in “special circumstances”. In addition to the new resource that supports the Western one, this thought has allowed us to test “truths” – verging on dogma – according to which a talent is “measured” and “predicted”. The usefulness of these characters has been to allow us to think-observe the operating modes by de-psychologizing and de-sociologizing the conceptual underpinning of talent and the concept of intelligence.

After having spent some ten thousand hours studying and practicing this specific way of looking-observing, and not seeing-analyzing (by ideas, idein), we arrived at the following observations:

• – a Western person speaking about his “talents” speaks in concepts according to a semantic-phonic reference that is more or less mastered, acquired by trainings, tests, discussions, readings and indirect influences supported by social networks, by the contribution of digitalization;
• – anyone who is led to emulate an activity or observe in a situation according to the principle of the “forgetting zone” (moment-position favoring the forgetting of the presence of the evaluator) never implements what he/she has previously said in a higher sequence that is more or less to 2 minutes;
• – the “classical” evaluators translate and interpret in a (almost) systematic way what they “look at” by way of a semantic reference with a socio-psychomorphic and mono-cultural tendency;
• – the “observers”, when they combine the concept of talent with personality and a “remarkable” value, become blind to the operating reality of “talent”.
• – In order to “develop talent”, it is necessary to establish (and not “know”) what is being observed, from where one observes, what one wishes to assess (and not measure), the gaps serving as a reference for observation-analysis, the expected results/utility, then what one wishes to “actualize” (activate) and not “develop” (in the ontological sense: more than, better than, beyond, from “self”). Transdisciplinary and cross-culture practice has provided us with a tool of thought that allows us to develop and fertilize a resource, which, it seems to us, has been depleted by more than two millennia of human ontology. To conclude this section, we propose five excerpts from the Charte de la Transdisciplinarité (Transdisciplinary charter) (Convento da Arrábida, November 6, 1994¹) to which we adhere as a researcher and entrepreneur:

• – Article 1: any attempt to reduce human beings to a definition and dissolve them in formal structures of any kind is incompatible with the transdisciplinary vision;
• – Article 3: transdiscipline is complementary to the discipleship approach; it brings out new data from the confrontation of disciplines that articulate them together; and it offers us a new vision of nature and reality. Transdiscipline does not seek mastery of several disciplines, but the openness of all disciplines to what crosses and surpasses them;
• – Article 10: there is no privileged cultural place from which to judge other cultures. The transdisciplinary approach is itself transcultural;
• – Article 12: the development of a transdisciplinary economy is based on the assumption that economics must be at the service of human beings and not the other way around;
• – Article 14: rigor, openness and tolerance are the basic characteristics of transdisciplinary attitude and vision. The rigor in the argument that takes all the data into account is the safeguard against possible aberrations. Openness implies acceptance of the unknown, the unexpected and the unpredictable. Tolerance is the recognition of the right to ideas and truths contrary to our own.

2.2.1. Agreeing on our common ground

Our language is characterized by its writing, which means that it is semanticconsonant (Greek alphabet), the letter being the distinctive element. The peculiarity of our writing-language lies in its linear construction, which we can recognize by its specific organization, that is, a line figure from left to right (boustrophedon). This follows from the way in which the oxen (bous) turned from one furrow to another (strophe). Our language offers a phonetic writing style built from the letter (distinctive sign). Once able to decode phonemes, it is possible to read the entire repertoire of the language without necessarily being able to understand what you are reading. Thus, a “gifted” child will be able to read, write and pronounce Kant without apprehending or understanding all the nuances of the meaning of the words or underlying concepts; as a result, the Western child will be able to speak without knowing what it means. The (simple) ability to master the mechanism of associating consonants and vowels offers the possibility-potential to translate the wide range of existing vocabulary.

On the other hand – from a geographical point of view – the syllabic, or logographic, language-writing language has several thousand signs. The Chinese language offers about 50,000 characters compared to about 20 phonemes for our language. In order to be able to read a character, the Chinese child must be able to associate an image with a sound (a syllable is worth a sound). Hence, both children and adults need to know the characters in order to read them. On the one hand, the alphabet separates the sign and the idea (the thing which is thought), and on the other hand, the sinogram closely associates the sign and the thing which is thought. This may explain why our culture is so rich in concepts, just as it may explain why Chinese thought, whether from a scientific, reflective, strategic or artistic point of view, has remained close to reality. On the one side, a Euclidean science based on reasoning (logismos), and on the other, a Chinese science (philosophia perenis) elaborated on the basis of organic materialism.

We observe on a daily basis during our “talent” missions of assessment that people – whether they are “gifted”, have “high-potential” or are “normal” – are unable to name their modes of operation. The language favors a form of confinement in an abstract and unreal semantics. If they know how to express “who” they are, it is through a language formatted by books, by tests and not by what they observe for themselves in a situation. If we use “favorable”, it is because we have seen a similar difficulty in Asia. Few people are able to explain with precision and without deviation the operation of their skills and the observable reality of the said modes of operation.

Here is the example of an email received from a professional wishing to carry out development work. He evokes the discovery of his “gifted” status:

“The Talent. Throughout my career (especially internationally and in sports), I have developed teams, tried to unleash the potential of my employees and created stimulating environments to increase performance and well-being. All this is done in a more or less empirical way, but with success according to colleagues. However, there was always something missing. A little inner voice telling me that you can do better, do differently, than some people’s misunderstandings about proposals for solutions, that seemed obvious to me. And then a little while ago, I found out I was gifted. I understood then the discrepancy that sometimes appeared in my relationships, the behaviors that I refrained to give others time to understand, and the discomfort that sometimes seized me. I then decided to put my career on hold in order to resume studies, on personal development and try to work on several aspects: release of potential, performance, well-being, especially in sports and around people with potential, and help people to achieve their full potential.”

This short excerpt may illustrate the importance of psychomorphy in this writing. We recall that the latter is the model of thought aimed at translating everyday situations through the systematic filter of the reference system relating to Being: “trying to liberate the potential, a small inner voice saying I can do better, misunderstandings, I discover that I am gifted, hence the discrepancy with others, etc.” “People” confuse the operative gap with the difference in personality. They make a recurring categorical mistake, as if a former Chinese painter had met his European counterpart of the Renaissance. The first one would say: observe – distant deep – clouds – birds – insipid. The second one would respond a priori: “I seek the best perspective in order to translate my point of view, my feeling and my vision relative to beauty as well as possible, because I feel so many intense things in my inner self, that only my hand carried by the breath of God could release this powerful emotion by manifesting beauty”.

The difference in cultures leads to the operative gap in the same way as, we will later develop, the operative gap leads to the gap in a result and not the difference. Thus, after a few specific questions, we noticed that this person was perhaps “gifted” according to current concepts, but the reality was different. Indeed, he operated in a specific manner away from others, hence the feeling of being “different”. Our indifference to his “status” allowed us to focus on the operative reality and not on what he thought he was “being” in relation to (the difference to) others.

Unlike phonetic writing, syllabic writing is dynamic and participative. It leads to a visual and sensorimotor memory because of a dynamic and precise layout in-from space. Picto-ideographic writing, also called configurative, has been elaborated to observe, look at and describe, where our semantic-phonetic language has developed to think, abstract, see, reflect and analyze. It is not insignificant if, according to Chinese mythology, the inventor of Chinese characters, Cang Jie (Tsang-Kie), the Yellow Emperor’s seer-scribe, is represented with two pairs of eyes. A pair of eyes observing the traces of bird legs to make writing characters. The second pair, on the other hand, is capable of looking-scouting phenomena and things beyond appearances. It is here that the gap begins between China, on the one hand, where the principle of observation is being organized and developed, and, on the other hand, where the principle of “seeing” things through the use of the mind is being elaborated and thought of.

NOTE.– It is (therefore) “natural” that the word talent, as an object of thought, is elaborated and constructed in this way, just as it was “natural” for philosophy, religion and then psychology to weave a set of intellectual coherences to “explain” what a talent is and not what it shows, how it unfolds, how it is observed and how it produces results as well as usefulness.

2.2.2. When knowledge obstructs Being, saying and doing

Virtually all (to our knowledge) definitions of the words talent do not “show” how it operates from the observational point of view, nor do they show the result (actualization) from the point of view of process. Hence, the fact that all the definitions are conceptual and centered on Being seems to be “coherent” with our language; it is also the reason why the issue of competency has changed little from a theoretical point of view – except, as it seems to us, by the contribution of Le Boterf’s work evoking operative schemes – since the 1970s. Embracing the idea that competency is of knowing-being, knowing-doing and knowing-saying, it can show how the model “tramples” and ideologizes itself (attaches to itself). Why? Because doing (technê), saying (logos) and being (nous) are all three submissive – the word is correct – to “knowing” (epistemê). We cannot do anything without knowing, saying nor being. In each case, knowing predominates action. In this case, it is possible to understand why the (false) debate between the innate and the acquired was so intense. The innate emancipates itself from the obligatory “knowledge” required to operate, where the acquired implies this postulate settled by more than two millennia of reasoning and epistemology. We will come back to this later.

These three words extend the legacy of Greek philosophy and, in particular, that of Plato, who, without a “state of mind”, diverts Homer’s concepts to better justify his ideology of perfection. Let us take technê, for example, whose origin refers to the Greek metis for its skill, its polytropic aspect (gnōmē polúboulos) and not to the straight and fixed line that must be controlled in order to act. Doing = Mastering the right and fixed knowledge related to the activity, (thus) which “Knows, knows how to do (know-how): Q.E.D.”. It takes knowledge (from the familiar) to “do”, “say”, “be”, and yet, daily life shows that companies are struggling to “explain” all the useful and necessary “skills” through this conceptual triplet.

Our language does not produce the entire semantic and conceptual resource to “explain” the reality of our modes of operation, which seems to be confirmed by the work of Rizzolatti and Sinigglia, researchers in neuroscience [RIZ 08] – in particular, the study of mirror neurons – when they partly evoked the notion of conceptual and linguistic mediation (p. 203) that make it possible to give form (means of comprehension) to experience, as well as the whole set of motor skills “which, in their complexity, are not present in our vocabulary of acts [...] How can we translate the perception of a set of movements, which in itself is often deprived of meaning, with the possibility of action endowed for us with meaning?” [ibidem, p. 152]. Hence, “assessing” talents with “knowledge” grids is like trying to measure a smile from an abscissa and an ordinate.

“Definitions” explain (explicare), by developing concepts and ideas (knowledge-related), talent as an object and not as an operating principle. These definitions have a point of view (idein) on the word and what it is supposed to “show”. When a word is constructed by a view of mind, it shows nothing of reality: gifted, endowment, high potential and skilled are simple examples. How is it possible to observe what is called a “gift” in terms of utility, when the origin starts from a religious allegory? How is what we call “skill” observed in situations? Gift (donum) is the act of giving, but also means a present (offering). In the first millennium of our era, the term, by abstraction, expressed what was given most often in the perspective of a benefit (1370–1372). It was only in the 16th Century that the word gift acquired its “definitive” status as an innate disposition in religious and fairy tales. Moreover, making the “gift” a reality through conceptualization (e.g. gifting), which we would then try to “prove” through some kind of neuroscientific demonstration, is a step that we will not take. In fact, it is not the innate that is the problem but the use of the term “gift”, as a religious origin, with the intention of having it say what is a complex reality. Here, from “Gift to Talent” is a “view of the mind” or, if we had to be precise, an allegory elaborated on the mode of transduction (analogy from 1 to 1, not related to the initial rule). And yet, the use and conviction of the idea that “gift” is a reality leads to a debate which would, very quickly, become sterile. Indeed, the Truth is indifferent to the opinions opposed to it.

In 2009, Usain Bolt, six-time Olympic Champion and five-time World Champion, suffered an accident on the 2000 Jamaica highway. As he sees the condition of his car pictured a few weeks later on the Internet, he comes to the conclusion that he was saved by a superior force:

“I understood one thing. A very important thing. I became aware that someone had saved my life [...] A higher power had granted me the right to stay alive. Almighty God [...] so I took this accident as a warning. An invisible sign, like a huge banner. “Hey, Bolt!, it read. I gifted you with a super-talent and the world records that go with it, and I’ll watch over you. But you have to do something about it. Drive safely. Take care of yourself”. The man upstairs was right. He had given me a gift, and it was up to me to make the most of it” [ALL 16, p. 16].

The issue is not to discuss the certainty of Usain Bolt, but to visibly show the impregnation of the gift like the present of a higher power. It takes the Other (whether it is he, she or it) for the gift to be given. We receive the gift, and it is up to us to take “advantage” of it, as explains the religious allegory.

The problem with the view of the mind is that it does not describe-observe the reality or the operational complexity underlying “talent” (talento). Hence, the semantic and conceptual arsenal surrounding talent is so fruitful, but so “poor” in its field of observability. The great family of Human Sciences, centered on Being and its model, has perhaps missed out on a potential – that is, a latent availability that a configuration initiates – because what is this model, if not Being that has all in it (autos-kratos)?

The Aristotelian common ground (founder of the science of Being, ontology) has permeated the whole of Western thought for 2000 years. It myelinates itself by wrapping its “words” and concepts around Being, that is, its mind (nous), its emotions (motion) and its soul (psukê). Thought “sees” through its principal agent, the eye, which itself is relayed by the soul’s eye (oma tês psukhê). From this dynamic, both mathematical and geometric knowledge (the intelligible) was born. It leads the “phonetic” mind to think and analyze (intus objective) the things from reality and the mind objectively. Thus, everything that is written about talent is (certainly) true, but at the risk of repeating ourselves, nothing proves that it is real.

In corporate language: ideas have become data, then Big Data “defines” the person as a known and controlled object (can be standardized, generalized and measured). Thus, it seems possible to “predict” from the latter what a person will be in 5–10 years, by rationalizing and by combining the qualities, capacities and preferences of the being that his “personality” induces.

The risk of speaking and seeing talents in this way is to preach, in other words, to produce a speech that arrogates the right to know (for the other) what a remarkable talent like hot beauty or a brilliant mind is. Now, none of the terms remarkable, hot or brilliant are related to physicality; they are phonetic constructions carrying a conceptual signifier that belongs to the great family of logos, that is, the great categorical family of speech and reason: it says (much), but it shows nothing (or little) of reality. Here is where the problem starts and where it should originate from: the mind (nous) thinking of talent as an extension of a (logical) reasoning, affixed to the things of the mind and consequently to the person.

Vernant, in his book Les origines de la pensée grecque (The Origins of Greek Thought), writes a possible synthesis of this observation:

“Philosophy had to gradually forge its own language, elaborate its concepts, build logic, construct its own rationality. But in this task, it did not get much closer to physical reality; it borrowed little from the observation of natural phenomena; it did not experiment. The very notion of experimentation remained foreign to it. It edified mathematics without seeking to use it in exploring nature. Between mathematics and physics, computation and experience, this connection was missing, which seemed to us to be the link between geometry and politics. For Greek thought, if the social world is to be subjected to numbers and measure, nature is rather an approximate area to which neither exact calculation, nor rigorous reasoning applies. [...]” [VER 02, p. 133].

2.2.3. Educating the “forms of looking”

Within the framework of our work, our activities as an observer-evaluator and entrepreneur, Chinese thought educates us to look differently (in the literal sense of the word) and, consequently, to think differently about our models; not in order to “do or say better” than our culture, but in order for us to move forward and to deviate just enough, so that we can replenish our common ground of understanding (Greek). The adage “to distance oneself” takes its meaning here. Indeed, and as mentioned earlier, it would be boring to think that Chinese thought is “better” than ours. It provides a useful investigative space to reframe our models, our way of “saying” and consequently our way of operating. If we see (idein) talents through a set of concepts, Chinese thought allows us to look at the course of events in a dynamic and spatial manner. The course of events here refers as much to what unfolds between the East and the West (dong xi) in terms of polarity, as to the process of transformation (hua).

To look at is therefore not to understand what happens in the intelligible sense (epistemê), but to observe what operates with discretion, what changes, what appears to suggest that nothing happens when nothing happens (wuwei). Thus, looking can be approached in many ways: from bias, “lài” 睐 , by turning the head, “gù” (顾), from a high place, “kàn” 瞰), carefully, by staring at his/her gaze “guān” 矔), permanently (concentrated), “dīng shì”, 对视). The range of opportunities opens up as soon as one leaves the mind and Being to look at reality (we will come back to this later). This particularity to specify many forms of looking leads us to conceptualize the principle. We call it “the forms of looking”.

The issue of observing what might be called “talent” is starting a new twist: when I have a biased view 睐 of this person because the way he or she operates requires this form of looking in order to observe the particular angle, what do I observe? When I look at a high place 瞰 what does the position offer me as a distinction and trend? For example, looking at a gardener sowing carrot seeds by using a small spoon and his thumb (as a specific technique) requires a form of biased look, but also careful attention 矔 to understand how gesture, body movement, the angle of one’s gaze and the orientation of the elbow are organized in this “benign” and yet “talented” process. It will be tempting to talk about the gardener’s skill(s), which in turn will lead to an explanation of the operating principle, “how does he operate?” and not to psychologizing it by using the verb as much as the copula for it to be: “he is (very) skillful”. Where does the gardener’s movement begin, so that the result observable in the furrow leads us to formulate the word “talented”, as a semantic “synthesis” of an observation-thought? In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela highlights a key point of his culture in the first few pages of his book:

“Like all the Xhosa children, I acquired knowledge mainly through observation. We were supposed to learn through imitation and emulation, not by asking questions. When I first went to the white people’s home, I was amazed at the number and nature of questions the children asked their parents – and the parents’ willingness to answer them. At home, the questions were seen as boring; adults simply gave the information they thought was necessary” [MAN 95, p. 17].

The learning of the forms of looking is unavoidable when one “claims” to want to develop talents, otherwise, not that we will not be able to observe them, but we will reduce them to the “knowledge” that the eye of the mind “sees”. This eye, “we know”, is blind to reality.

2.3.1. Developing a tool for thinking to construct in thought

The purpose of this book is to develop a tool to think as much as a method (in the Chinese sense, dao 道) of observation and assessment. Both will allow professionals to operate in situations with competency (intentional operating mode). Through this method, we propose to apprehend the dynamics that are favorable to the actualization of a performance, and not to the attainment of a performance (high performance to the status of an objective, objectum or purpose, telos). In order to clarify our position regarding the use of the word tool, we choose the angle offered by François Jullien when he writes “I call everything that is used to construct in thought a tool” (2012, p. 135). In doing so, we are moving towards an approach to the tool whose intention is to favor the structuring of thought and non-detached observation of reality and the observed. We are thus moving away from the tool as a semantic convenience aimed at reducing human activity and skills to abstract (any kind of) concepts, the risk of which – proven – is to lead the latter to a simplified thought:

“Simplified thought eliminates contradiction because it divides reality into uncomplex fragments that it isolates [...] from then on, simplified thought knows no ambiguities or equivocation. Reality has become a logical idea, that is to say, an ideology, and it is this ideology that claims to own the concept of science” [MOR 94, p. 323].

The observation of craftsmen, sportsmen, artists and other professions using tools (oustils) in France and other countries shows that the latter (the tool) is, above all, an intermediary between hand and material. We observed that many tools were manufactured or reworked by “hand” professionals to fit their movement and morphology. Perception, that is, the ear, the eye, the touch, the sense of smell, the feeling, but also the memory (especially the ability to speculate, tekmairesthai), and the movement are partly its “rudders”. It is in this regard that we will use the word “tool”, a rudder to guide and build the activity and skills of the professional in a situation, as an intermediary between the person being looked at and the person being assessed. Thinking governs itself.

Let us approach the word method and emphasize in this notion, as thought in our culture, the designation of a set of ideas and concepts (considered as “true”), which we should follow (“do”) in order to reach an objective (objectum, which stops sight). The latter is intended to be measured. The measurement indeed stops the object (ob.). Let us remember that Plato – extended by Descartes – distorts the meaning that Homer gives to the word method in order to justify his model of ideas: the true road to ideas, and not what experience makes it possible to acquire as useful knowledge (utilis, which brings a practical advantage), itself referring to the metis, the curved and sprawling intelligence adapted to situations (polūplokon nóēma). The gap and intellectual manipulation are visible enough, in the sense of ideas, to underline them.

The choice to think of the tool as a structuring of thought encourages the acquisition, elaboration and organization of skills and knowledge relating to the ways of looking at the operation in action, then its assessment and actualization (which we prefer to “development”). To say that a person “has” talent does not explain the observable reality, nor does it specify anything factual (or rarely), except to “attach” a person to a word, and then the word to the person. We associate the word organize with the Chinese notion of category (類, lei), that is, objects sharing something common, or something that makes them likely to interact together in a given situation. The category is what brings together elements of the same family. The categorical error is what wrongly associates an element with a category. Thus, using the measure to assess a skill, elevating the word talent to a corporate status or personality aspect, applying a qualifier to an operative principle and combining competency with declarative (knowledge) are categorical errors; in other words, “an erroneous process of assigning an element to a category” [FRE 02].

Therefore, potential is not in the same category as talent, the syllabary language (Chinese, Inuit, etc.) is not in the same category as the alphasyllabary language (French, German, etc.). These are simple examples that are often subject to categorical errors.

Our work proposes a categorical logic that aims at observational consistency and a situation analysis principle. This is not thought of from the point of view of the intelligible (pure-minded), but of the correlation (dynamic tension) between observed notions/aspects. Indeed, the operating mode is in line with the trend so that the expected (real) result is a consequence and not an objective (fixed) set at the outset of the process. Potential is a force on which “talent” is based to expand itself, such as the surfer, who by his undulating skill (aiólē) masters the waves after having initiated, by anticipation (prodaenai, skill to foresee), the right amount of latent thrust when lifting.

Potential is in fact latent (where availability is polarized), then its tendency is anticipated at the beginning (where weak signals are detectable by scanning) and which, by deployment, leads to emergence. The emergence leads to actualization, so that the activity is fully deployed. The configuration (moment-position) is where and when (in the sense of a process) talent can be actualized-deployed. Thus, competency, as a replicable operating mode, mobilized in conscience that is measurable, duplicable and transferable, has more categorical relatives with talent (talento) than with personality (persona-nous). Indeed, the “quality” of a person as a subjective and social (standardizable) criterion has more categorical relatives with personality than with talent (talento). The aim of this book is to clarify the categorical relations of “talent” and “potential”, in order to assess and deal with them accurately and coherently.

2.3.2. Describe reality and not what you think of it

When a company wishes to define the job description of a “leader”, and if this desire is to produce a “job/function/performance sheet” favorable to the assessment, recruitment and support of the said “leader”, the writing of the document must remain “stuck” to the observable and not to what one “thinks” of it. However, this is what can be read in many company job descriptions. Here is an example, a summary of several of them: “the leader makes decisions and takes positions at the right time. He must be able to grasp and understand situations, thus enabling effective collaboration on the collective objective. His behavior and values must embody those of the group. Thus, because he is not afraid of failure and dares to go to the end of his initiatives, he remains focused on current and future innovation and shows he is strategic, etc.”. To this idealized text, filled with injunctions and marked by our culture of “being” and “the perfect”, we prefer a factual and figurative writing: In order to operate as a strategist, (and not) a leader [one]: 1) identifies weak signals perceptible in the latency/initiation state; 2) correlates them in order to assess them (the finesse of analysis, in the sense of conjecture, and observation of gaps), the tendencial (favorable) logic for clients and the environment (consequentially for the company); 3) favorises verbal, non-verbal, written communication, in coherence with the stakes (risk/opportunity) of its teams through the (competent) use of an adapted semantics; 4) makes the expected result available to people, so that everyone can appreciate (assess) the way in which they can take part; 5) operates with empathy through his ability to identify facial expressions and attitudes, but also the different realities of his collaborators, regardless of the culture, thus mobilizing in an expert manner, the right and adapted behaviors and decisions (favorable and positive; without departing from the expected), etc..

The suggested writing favors an “emulsifying” representation of the posture held, that is, it apprehends-depicts what this (the operating mode) looks like in “real life”. It is therefore not a question of talking about the leader from an abstract concept, because if this “sounds good”, we will in fact be unable to appreciate (assess in terms of appreciating nuances, wei) the operating modes, skills and knowledge mobilized by the latter. Thus, we choose a style of writing centered on an explicit and non-explanatory precision: “observing micro-expressions in order to deduce adapted behaviors” is not conceptual, but descriptive, and therefore observable.

To achieve “acceptable” results, we have carried out epistemological and semiotic work for which we have remained vigilant over a period of 13 years. The latter was reinforced between 2010 and 2015; this period of our thesis work was carried out in parallel with our professional activity. The modality first consisted of agreeing on what a word shows and not/no longer what it means (in the sense of logos). It is here that the study of Chinese and Egyptian writing (especially hieroglyphics) was a valuable help. Indeed, these languages were not developed to “think” in terms of concepts, but to observe-describe-imitate phenomena, objects and situations. Hence, we have chosen certain categories and classes of these two forms of writing to develop a syllabary system (creation of simplified characters) adapted to the assessment of the observed.

Figure 2.1 illustrates what the hieratic hieroglyph can show by partially imitating the linear hieroglyph (first column; [CHA 41, pp. 17–37).

Our language is rich in nuances and its ability to “think” in terms of concepts, to abstract and to explore universes of unknown (unthinkable) thought for other cultures. It can, thanks to the resource offered by syllabary languages (logographic, pictographic), including Chinese, re-fertilize the resource. One is no better than the other, but their common ground, a gap from one another, offers a potential that we exploit to the extent of our availability and skills. In order not to leave any ambiguity about what we are openly saying, let us make it clear that no language or culture is “better/superior” than another, which is why we must not combine its common ground and its use. Thus, it is not “psychology” that we could criticize, but the ideological use of what is done with it. The theoretical/conceptual origin, organized into disciplines from the end of the 16th Century onwards, may have led us to believe that what it thinks is reality. The resource’s use of Chinese thought, and not what the Chinese decide to do with it to date, is similar to the resource’s use of Western thought, not what the Westerners decide – or not – to do with it. As far as we are concerned, we are talking about content (what we think from) and not about usage (the manner in which we use what we are thinking from), which perhaps implies that it should require an increase in competency in managers, leaders, human resources: from where do you think, and how do you use your content (in its use) on a daily basis? This is, perhaps, one of the problems of many managers and their human resources department: an inability to regain functional competency in their semantics. They are certainly “intelligent”, but (often) lost in the concepts of thought.

We then eliminated all abstract words and concepts, inducing ontological principles from which a tendency of psychomorphic thought stems. This has enabled us to preserve and elaborate a way of observing phenomena, as well as operating modes on a triple principle: coherent, combinable and comparable. Hence, the study of the trois lointains chinois (three distant Chinese) (san yuan), as much used in painting as in Chinese strategy, was very useful to us. We will come back to this in the section on the observation of the MO.O.N.s. We then preserved or developed concepts whose purpose was to observe and not “understand” human activities, and, where necessary, animals – even vegetables – in order to encourage the evaluation and actualization of talents (talento) and potentials (shi).

Thus, thanks to the resources of the Chinese language, we have integrated characters and notions that allow us to express what our phonetic language, and sometimes certain scientific choices, negate or struggle to accept the “principle” of. Indeed, the use of models and concepts (still) in progress is sometimes unable to grasp dynamic, but not visible, phenomena. For example, let us take the particle “er” for the resources it offers to think about in terms of observation and assessment of talents. Our culture, whose tendency remains ontological and causative (autocratic), clings to the idea that a person, in possession of a “self”, tools and knowledge “must-may” be able to succeed. If she cannot, it is because there is a problem and/or she has a problem. It is therefore necessary for her to work on herself and/or on the problem (by apposition or mobilization of knowledge), which could be summed up in this idea: to do and do again so that nothing is not done enough (reflect, analyze, think, reconsider, seek in oneself, measure, act, etc.). Chinese thought, having neither developed nor encouraged causative thought, nor even the autocratic principle, has, since the Zhou era, incorporated – as “obvious” – the principle of wuwei er wu bu wei (non-action, 無為), which amounts to phrasing: to do and not to do anymore, but in such a way that nothing is not done, or even, to do nothing and so nothing is not done (Jullien). Let us emphasize the role of the liaison word er/and, that is both adversarial and consecutive. Indeed, the principle of this little word as a complement to an internal object (Jullien) implies that the action initiated must be maintained in its perspective of effectiveness. The object – the (too) active and “controlling-active” person – then removed, favors the full capacity to deploy the activity. In other words, whoever wants to make an orchid bloom must not water it every day, but on the contrary, apprehend its activity, its propensity, and stop doing when what should have been done, has already been done. To reposition it on the issue of talent, “measuring” a talent fixes it to a number (and does not come out of it). Emulating a talent, and then starting the conditions of actualization, is not-acting.

The actualization of talent(s) is based on natural propensity and not by “hitting” objectives, measures and actions. A woman gave us the example that she loved to draw as a child. One day, a teacher arrived without her knowing the reason. Her parents wanted to “help” her to draw “better”. She then did not want to touch a pencil anymore and did not draw any more. By acting directly and forcing the natural (by imposing an unsolicited or unwanted aid), the desire to draw dissolved. The parents meant well, but “goodness” is one too many intentions that hinder the natural.

Another implication of the particle “er” is to think of M.O.O.N.s not from a rational and ontological point of view (isolable and attributable) through the verbs “to be” talented or “to have” talent, but in a dynamic and effective register, in other words, in concordance, coexistence, conversion/inversion and also in an adverse and consequential way with the utility, potential and configuration for which they are attracted-mobilized. A person can, “at the same time”, deploy several forms of intelligence, and also, in real time, convert one form to another or correlate two of them together. The example of the “er” particle is a useful example for understanding the implications of talent observation.

The sentence attributed to Einstein can often be read on professional social networks: “you can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking you used when you created them”; therefore, we have taken the formula literally. Process the issue of talent, without thinking otherwise – in a heterotopic way – the latter, is tantamount to wanting to do something new on the workbench. Hence, we have developed specific semantics, whose vocation is to make the professional, but also the person/group of people who are seeking to “develop” what is/are called “talent(s)”. Again, each word is associated with a principle that operates and can be observed, for example the word indifference:

“Looking at it is then an attitude of indifference, that is to say, without a fixed idea, without prejudice, without idea, without preference or tendency of thought, so that it is possible by scanning-attention, to perceive without selection-distinction (from a view of the mind, from knowledge), any information (index), even if seemingly insignificant (no meaning for the mind)” [RIC 16, p. 344].

NOTE.– Indifference, as a way of observing and thinking, implies looking-observing a person, an animal, a plant, a situation without fixed ideas, without notice on the current one, in other words, neither consent, nor disagreement, whether in a categorical or indexical manner (a light grin, a wiggling of the eyebrows, etc.); thus, looking with indifference promotes the ability to describe, in a factual way, what is unfolding without adding a set of cumbersome words (hyper, super, remarkable, beautiful, interesting, intelligent, etc.).

When we train professionals in talent assessment, we point out that an “assessor” who is incapable of looking-observing a person deploying a set of skills to optimize the way of “doing” housework, with the same indifference as a musician playing Mozart, will be an incompetent assessor, as he or she is subjected to his or her own projections of “social beauty”.

Lastly, we have historically chosen Gardner‘s theory of forms of intelligence, because it seemed the closest to a principle of observation to us. In this, it was “acceptable”. However, if this theory offers a fertile space for investigation, we propose underlining and operating observations that will help consolidate-adjust Gardner’s initial work. The latter’s work may leave some loopholes where “simplified thought” creeps in to tell him and negotiate-give his own opinion on the matter. Hence, to the recurrent ambiguities and fundamental errors inherent in Gardner’s underlying understanding, we propose to bring the result of ten years of experimentation with this theory, with, on the one hand, a necessary biodegradability and, on the other hand, conceptual, theoretical and epistemological developments.

2.3.3. Being is not the human: de-psychologizing the issue of talent

We propose to de-psychologize the term talent, that is, to think about it without letting ourselves be filtered by Being and its sprawling reference as deployed in all spheres of society. It is not a question of negating the existing models, but of drawing on them for usefulness. However, it is important not to reduce the human being to this initial concept. Indeed, if the great discipline of psychology seems to have a monopoly on the thought of Being – thanks to its recurrent ability to “explain everything” – it does not have, it seems to us, the monopoly of the human being and consequently that of the living as a whole. A scientific principle implies that a theory accepts its biodegradability, in other words, it accepts, from the outset an “update”, an evolution, a partial or definitive questioning of its original hypothesis. It is here perhaps that our words will be critical; in fact, to speak of talent by continuing to associate it with Being, itself stemming from the theoretical and conceptual models of the first philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato, comes back to talking about planet Earth by affirming (again) that it is “flat”. We are astonished that this conceptual model could have been deployed in an exponential way without its underlying content, a priori, having never really “moved”, since we still have everything in us.

Dealing with the issue of talent development – subject to maintaining the formula – leads to an explanation of the content from which we deploy the subject matter and principles. When we write content, we mean: what we are thinking about, where we think from, from a cultural and semiotic point of view, and how we produce that thought. In fact, if we lay down the intention of a scientific work, that is, that which is observable, descriptive, assessable, replicable, plausible (and possibly measurable), we need to clarify-explain the purpose and method. We cannot be satisfied with concepts and superlatives to justify an idea by relying on “evidence” in neuroscience, as it can be read. Indeed, one does not justify a concept by a fact, but by (li) factual reasoning and reasoning that can be correlated. A (observable) fact is justified by a precise set of correlations, whose assessable and/or measurable results are acceptable, in other words, whose difference between the expected and observed is within an initially accepted-validated value. The validation criterion being specified and explained within the limits set by the researcher(s).

Fact serves to prove the reliability of a theory. Hence, fact and concept do not belong to the same category. A concept makes it possible to formalize a set of ideas in order to make an idea clear, whereas fact serves to “prove” an observation, a hypothesis or a theoretical intuition. Thus, in order to explore the question asked by this book, we present our method of investigation, its theoretical and epistemological foundations inherent in our 13 years of experience and observation (2003–2016).

If we want to remain within the classical concept of talent (remarkable capacity), then we can be satisfied with what we find in the different works. The latter present and content themselves with different semantic and conceptual negotiations, with some meanings accessible since the Late Middle Ages. They thus offer a satisfactory, albeit narrow, extension of the concept of talent. If, on the contrary, we want to theorize the question of talent, in the first sense (theoria), then we must operate rigorously and methodically, and refrain from the comfortable shortcuts of our intellectual, cultural and social preferences, even pseudo-epistemological ones. We choose Roger Pouivet‘s method to define a definition. Indeed, defining a definition implies rules by which it becomes possible to “clarify” the object of one’s thought, but (especially), in our case, to indicate what one’s look will be able to observe in order to evaluate and develop the said “object” of thought (the talent):

“It must be acknowledged that what is meant by “definition” is already far from clear [...] Do we even know what is defined by a definition? Is it one thing, one word, one concept? [...] If we have to solve all these difficulties before we start to define, we may have to wait a long time. As is often the case in philosophy, we will plunge into the media res, without being sure of what’s behind us, but not without caution […] A definition cannot be what it defines; it cannot have properties, effects, flavor and aura!” [POU 07, pp. 9–10].

2.3.4. Defining what “talent” can mean

Our intention is not to define the word talent to “fix” it to our idea, but to understand its dynamic principle (what it shows), in order to organize the useful and practical skills and knowledge involved. A definition, it should be remembered, cannot simply respond to a “what is it (talent)?” It is also not possible to introduce superlatives, terms that promote an ambiguity of understanding (inducing a “beauty/social morality”: beautiful, remarkable, skilled, genius, etc.). Pouivet puts forward three conditions:

• – a condition of intelligibility;
• – a condition of neutrality;
• – a condition of universality.

For the third, we have – as part of our thesis – replaced the term “universal” with “indifference” because of cultural gaps. Indeed, universality is too Western to impose itself on the world: “universality is a concept of reason, which, posing itself in terms of necessity, is justified in advance of any experience” Jullien reminds us [JUL 14a, p.31]. The condition of indifference, operating without fragmentation (difference) or disjunction, allows us to grasp the issue of strategic surgery without being locked up by the sum of classical knowledge that is involved.

The condition of intelligibility is to question something other than the word itself. If talent is “X”, then it is appropriate to question “Y”, in other words, what it refers to, what it shows, what you have to observe-ascertain to know more about “Y”. Thus, instead of asking what is “talent”? What will be asked is: what is the identifiable, descriptive result and what is the observable (and therefore assessable) operating mode whose result could lead us to say that what is produced could be called “talent”?

Questioning “Y” allows plausible hypotheses to be made and then, by correlation, leads to an acceptable hypothesis. Hence, asking “what is intelligence” or “what is talent?” leads to many (true) answers, but no (real) “acceptable” definition, because of the bias that the form implies. If we want to define “carpenter” – as mentioned above – or “surfer”, then we need to define “Y”, that is, the conditions under which what we call “surfer” is observed. What are the favorable/necessary/useful conditions for what is called “talent” to operate? Where does the process of saying that talent turns out to be “talent” begin? In our situation, “Y” stands for observable result. There is “talent” (Y) because there is an observable result (Y); and there is result, because there is a process, in other words, a development (continuum – without rupture) going from the latent to active (what is actualized). The first condition involves apprehending the process leading to an observable and descriptive result, and (hence) not to a set of “qualities” (subjective) of the person. The process involves the operation, that is, a sum (并 bing) of sequences, organized in acting er non-acting rhythms (wuwei, 無為) – we specify “er”² and not “and” – in a sum of configurations (shi-wei, moment-position) in the capacity to mold potential (che), in order to produce a positive result (without deviation from the expected/no deviation from the “natural”, tiān ji 天機).

The condition of neutrality: “If the nasty ducks sometimes turn out to be swans, it is apparent that the negative assessment was a categorical error. Bad husbands, however, are indeed husbands, no mistake” [POU 07, p. 13]. The condition of neutrality must not introduce any differential principle inducing subjectivity and assessment in the social and classical sense, that is, a use of assessment derived from the principle relating to the possession of a “know-how”, a “knowledge” aiming to “judge” people and situations, or to determine a quantity (of talent, of intelligence?) by calculation (1870). Therefore, it is not this inappropriate and often erroneous use of assessment that we will be working from. De facto, this condition eliminates aspects relating to degrees (over, under, normal, hyper, plus, minus, etc.) and references to merit (good, bad, neutral, average, remarkable, brilliant, formidable, genius, etc.).

The condition of neutrality removes the notions of distinction, differentiation, measurement and subjective assessment. It does not imply standardization or generalization, but respects the categorical principles (categorical consistency vs. categorical error). Thus, if the word “talent” is thought of in the “classical” model (social, absolute, ontological), then it is consistent with “personality” and all the subjective and normative notions. On the other hand, if “talent” is defined according to the modality presented in its aspect of process, then classifying it with the “classics” becomes a categorical error; a little like classifying “tomato” with “vegetable”, “anticipating” with “soft skills”, “strategy” with “know-how” or “assessment” with “measurement”.

The condition of indifference. Pouivet explains that universality is “without exclusivity”, that is, without preference. This condition must be able to withstand the “point of view” and bias of an idea. It must be able to demonstrate its reliability, despite cultural differences and gaps. What is observed among Inuit must be observable among Italians; only use and practice will distinguish one from the other. Thus, observing facial expressions, or using an object with dexterity is observable in any culture. Its use and symbolism may differ. Observing a “strategic operation” is similar (but not identical) in the West and China, but the use and method can be different.

This is the process by which we have managed to avoid speaking of “forms of intelligence” because of the lack of neutrality, intelligibility and universality (difference) of the term intelligence. In fact, in China, the concept of intelligence (ling) does not have the same connotation as in the West (logos-mathesis), whereas saying that the Inuit or Amazonian people with whom the exchange with Nature is as “obvious” as our beliefs in the idea that we have “everything in us” does. Consequently, the choice of the acronym MO.O.N. (natural operating mode), rather than keeping the word “intelligence” or “talent(s)”, seemed to us to be the most “coherent” in practice, but also in the category of thought that is necessary to encourage observation of what is named. Thus, by operating mode, it is necessary to apprehend the process modality by which activity is deployed. This modality promotes observability in humans, animals and plants.

With regard to the aforementioned “intelligence” and, in particular, the manner in which the “brain” is being told how it works, let us emphasize Joseph Ledoux‘s caution where he specifies that the neuroscientist is: “undeniably limited both by the “disposition” of the brain of the person who writes it and by the state of knowledge at the time of writing” [LED 03, p. 332]. Hence, on the one hand, Howard Gardner, the father of the theory of forms of intelligence (strangely), seems to pursue the idea that the brain is like a computer, and that it follows, he says, a “program”, whereas the neuro-anatomist Jill Bolte Taylor says: “even though we would like to believe that the human species has attained a form of biological perfection, we are not, however complex our organism may be, the result of an ideally successful genetic program. The human brain is constantly evolving. Even the brains of our ancestors, from two or four millennia ago, do not resemble those of our contemporaries. The development of language has altered the anatomical structure of our brains, as well the interconnections between our neurons” [TAY 08, p. 22].

Gardner seems to have been “caught” by the “slippery” part of “what is it”. This bias led him to define cognitive science according to him. Consequently, the common ground of his “theory” (philosophical-cognitive) emerges:

“It is therefore important that I begin by establishing what cognitive science is to me. I define cognitive science as a contemporary attempt, using empirical methods, to answer very ancient epistemological questions, and more particularly those concerning the nature of knowledge, its components, its sources, its development, its rise [...] it believes that the computer is of critical importance for understanding the human mind [...] the computer is also the most viable model for the functioning of the human mind” (1993, p. 18).

IMPORTANT.– By choosing the notion of natural operating modes and not of intelligence (“too” Greek, therefore “too” philosophical and consequently “too” ontological, then “too” psychological), we are making a major deviation from the classical model of cognition and consequently the “knowledge” deployed in companies. Whenever a “scientist” defines a concept on the basis of his opinion, his definition runs the risk of being criticized by an arsenal of ideas, but if it follows an approach that does not imply his personal opinion, then he favors hypotheses – albeit questionable – of observations, and no longer pure, intelligible considerations elaborated by his cultural spectrum. This does not mean that there will be no discussion, it just means that we will talk about the subject of observation and not the opinion we have.

If a French company wants to work with the Chinese, it will need to know the common ground of both cultures (their gaps). If it then wishes to “potentiate talents” (and not “manage” them) of Chinese and French managers, then it must agree on the modalities of observation from which the “said” talents will be actualized (thus responding to the company’s activity). This means that a company – its human resources department, its general management and operational management – wishing to succeed in its “talent” project will clarify the expected result, from which it becomes possible (potential) to apprehend useful and observable operating methods. It is therefore no longer a question of choosing “profiles” predetermined according to a generality (a norm) – even if “big data” would be used, because “big data”, it should be recalled, is only the algorithmic formulation of a basis of thought – but based on a triple correlation between configuration, utility and potential (see C.U.P. theory).

If the company wants to detect “talents” of sales people, it does not seek them in the classic abilities reference (knowing-saying/being/doing), but it will explain the operating modes most consistent with the expected result. Then, the latter will be used to agree on the modalities of observing the skills-abilities, in order to produce the expected “positive” and “replicable” result. For this reason, four questions can be asked:

• – what is the observable result leading us to think that this (similar) result is the one expected for our company?
• – what are the operating modes underlying this result that must be apprehended (assessed, ji) and then explained?
• – what latent potential(s) is/are available and necessary for these abilities?
• – in which configuration does it unfold without running out?

For one of our clients who wanted to evaluate “communicators”, the question was not: “what is a good communicator?”, but “how do you observe a communicator whose situational result is considered effective/efficient, useful (producing a practical advantage, a positive and favorable result)? What types of results can be seen? What use does it have?” Then, what are the useful (or even necessary) operating modes to reproduce this type of result? MO.O.N.s, namely interpersonal (empathic-interactive³), intrapersonal (assertive-autonomous), linguistic (phonetic-semantic), extra-personnel (multiple-tentacular) and scientific (intuitive-pragmatic), were chosen to respond to the 12 internal disciplines of this major enterprise.

Table 2.1 summarizes the process by which it is possible to “define” the word talent, not in what we “think”, but in what the word can “figure”. The methodology applies to concepts such as competency, leadership, agility, etc.

Here is a possible definition of “talent”. It is part of the theme we are working on.

DEFINITION.– Talent is the observable result, the consequence of actualizing a sum of natural (and/or/er acquired) operating modes that have been mobilized and deployed in a configuration where potential, as well as utility, have proved to be beneficial.

This definition hypothesis can be used in France, Nepal, China, Africa, Brazil, Iceland or anywhere in the world. In each of these countries, it is possible to observe operating modes in situation for an indefinite period of time. It is also possible to identify the potential (the medium endowed with effect, che), as well as the usefulness (utilis, practical advantage). Talent deriving from the observable result and no longer (only) from qualities inherent to the person who meets the condition of (universal) indifference by speculating neither on race, religion, “IQ”, skin color, form of handicap, nor on any “rational” and ideal distinction. It also meets the condition of neutrality by not inducing any subjective or normative value. Lastly, it can be understood (in the sense of being apprehended-figured) by anyone, including syllabic cultures, because the words used are chosen according to their figurative ability. In fact, it is possible to draw or represent operating modes, configuration, potential and utility by character. This is what led us to achieve our thesis, by developing a simplified syllabic writing that is favorable to the assessment of operating modes.

We will no longer say: this manager is remarkable; his results are very successful. However, we will say: his skill and ability to speculate by observing weak signals allows him to correlate the latter and accurately apprehend trends. Hence, his results are successful, not because he is “better”, but because he is (already) engaged in the process of actualizing, where others are reflecting on “feasibility” by studying and analyzing market data.