Dr. Kevin Polk

Sometimes people ask for a “tool” to solve some problem with.

News: www.drkevinpolk.com has been updated. You can see that it emphasizes Psychological Flexibility Training (PFT). Take a look and link to the site whenever possible. Thanks in advance!

Webinar: January 12, 2012 is the start date of the ACT for Pain webinar (4 sessions). Email me at kevin@drkevinpolk.com for details.

Psychological Flexibility Training (PFT): The diagram shows it all. It’s based on teaching people how to notice the difference between how it feels to do Toward behaviors and Away behaviors. While doing Away or Toward one can also notice the difference between Sensory and Mental experiencing.

Notice that while the diagram calls for people to sort experiencing and behaving, it immediately calls for noticing the difference between them. In other words, it’s the noticing that the big thing, not the sorting.

Once you do some noticing of these differences (especially toward and away), you will probably notice some interesting derivations showing up.

Want to learn how to train yourself and others? Check out my videos, more of this blog, and maybe even buy the book.

Be Well,

Kevin

Ad: I’m doing an ACT for Chronic Pain webinar (4 sessions) in January 2012. Email me at polkkev@gmail.com for more details.

Background: I started off to be an Industrial Organizational Psychologist and ended up a Clinical Psychologist who thinks a lot about how mental health delivery services are organized. In recent years I’ve learned a lot about Lean Management that’s based on the Toyota model. It turns out that ACT and Lean are similar.

The Diagram: Recall that ACT emphasizes getting out of your head and into your life. Lean talks about this in terms of getting out of the world of Imaginary problems and solutions and into the world of direct observations and solutions.

We’ve all done this in meetings…We sit around and someone says, “But what if this happens?” Then we all talk for an hour about how to fix that imaginary problem. Once that’s done, then someone says, “But what if this happens?” Then we talk for an hour about how to fix that imaginary problem. Once that’s done, then…

Fixing imaginary problems is a horrible management trap and Lean emphasizes getting out of that trap and into direct observation. In a factory that means getting down on the shop floor and watching. In a hospital that means watching a patient, a health care worker, or both. Direct Observation rules.

In the world of Direct Observations you ‘see’ two types of behaviors:

1. Value Added
2. Waste 

Of course there is a place for Imagination, and that comes in terms of Vision and dreaming up ways to move toward that Vision called Target Conditions. However, too much talk becomes and Obstacle. You see those at the bottom of the diagram in the “mental experiencing” section of the Matrix.

After a bit of talking about Vision and the Target Condition, the Obstacle of talking too much arrives and it’s time for Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles. Notice that the Target Condition is to the right of PDSAs. The PDSAs are designed to move toward the Target Condition. This is the world of direct observation. The Plan is concrete behaviors. People Do the concrete behaviors. Direct Observation of the results of the behaviors are Studied in terms of waste and value added. Then people take new Action based on the results. Multiple PDSAs are done until the Target Condition is reached.

Once the Target Condition is reached, then it’s time to line things up with the Vision again.

I think of this as organized evolutionary process.

The Lean way is lots of fun once you get it implemented.

Reference: Toyota Kata by Mike Rother

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