Did you ever classify people as open-minded people and conservative people? What about action-oriented people and procrastinators? After 30 years of trying to induce organizations to change, such classifications are so deeply ingrained in my thinking that they do have major ramifications on my actions. I tend to decide early on whether or not I would like to work with a company based on the classification box I had slotted the top management into. This audit visit forced me to realize that that classification is likely to lead to grave mistakes. Let me describe what brought me to such a radical conclusion.
The Company is producing fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in India (toothpaste is a fast-moving consumer good, while an electric toothbrush is not). I am specifying the country because most people who have not done business in India (like me until three years ago) do not comprehend the scale of this country. I think it will suffice to highlight that in India the number of FMCG shops is 6.5 million. No, this is not a typo. The number of this type of shops in India is more than the number of people living in my country, infants included. Our Company is a medium player; it does have close to 10% of the market. Still, in the vast Indian market it means that they are selling their products through 2,000 distributors serving 2.5 million shops.
Like most Viable Vision implementations, the implementation in this company started in production. Their eagerness to grow drove them to the dangerous situation where instead of taking the time to open the bottleneck, they took the shortcut of buying 40% of their intermediate product from the outside.*
* To understand how dangerous this situation is, consider a company that produces car engines. The crucial element in an engine is the cylinders. Now imagine that there is a bottleneck in cylinder production that limits the number of cylinders the company can produce and therefore the number of engines it can sell. A shortcut will be to buy 40% of cylinders from their competitor. Taking this shortcut, the company is now at the mercy of its competitor.
To rectify the situation it is vital to find ways to increase the bottleneck production. Using the standard techniques of TOC, those already described in The Goal, within 6 weeks from the beginning of the project THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 2 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
and without any significant investment, the situation was reversed in all four of their plants. Instead of buying this intermediate product, they started selling their intermediate product to other manufacturers.
Without losing a heartbeat, they moved to the next step in the Viable Vision plan. Like so many companies that have both production and distribution, this Company did not have a plant warehouse everything that was produced was shipped the same day to one of about 30 regional warehouses. They were moving at such a pace that not before long, the plant warehouses were in place and were stocked with the right amount of inventories for each one of their close to 100 SKUs (since the plants have some overlapping capabilities, the plants warehouses were managed as one logical warehouse).
Then they moved to the next link; they implemented the replenishment mode of operations to control shipments from the plant warehouse to all their regional warehouses. As you know this is not just a matter of modifying a computer system; it requires the much more difficult and sensitive challenge of changing managers span of authority. The regional warehouse managers no longer call the shots; they are no longer placing orders on the plants. Rather, the system replenishes the regional warehouse automatically according to the shipments from each regional warehouse to the distributors. Also, the warehouse managers no longer decide on the target levels of inventories in their regional warehouse; rather, they are decided according to the rules of TOC buffer management for distribution. The responsibility of the regional warehouse manager is now restricted to managing the operations of the warehouse properly.
Inventories went down, while shortages were almost eliminated. The real robustness of the system was vividly demonstrated to the entire Company a few months after completion of that step. In the monsoon, a flood damaged most of the goods held in one of the regional warehouses. In the past, such a misfortune would have caused major disruptions in supply in that region. The regional warehouse manager wrote a memo stating that the disruptions were surprisingly small and that within one week everything was back to normal.
All of the above, and a resulting increase of about 10% in sales, was achieved in slightly less than 5 months from the beginning of the Viable Vision project. How would you classify the managers of this company? Would you classify them as open-minded and action-oriented, as results-driven? I personally think that in this case such adjectives might not be strong enough.
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But that is not the end of the story. The next step in the VV implementation, as you all know, was to expand the replenishment mode of operations from internal distribution (plant warehouse to regional warehouses) into external distribution (from the regional warehouses to the distributors). Thats when the first signs of hesitation appeared.
The distributors are not employees of the Company; each distributor is a separate independent business. Now consider what is actually the meaning of approaching a distributor and suggesting the switch to the replenishment solution. One way of looking at it is that we have to go to a distributor and tell him: Dear friend, today, as the business owner, you determine what we should ship to you; you are giving us orders. We suggest that from tomorrow, you will report to us, on a daily basis, what you have sold and we will be the one who decides what we will ship to you (and as a consequence, we will also determine how much inventories you will hold).
What is the anticipated reaction of a distributor to such an offer? Most likely it will be in the form of rhetorical questions like: Are you serious?! Are you suggesting that you know how to run my business better than me?!
This was certainly the anticipation of the sales managers, especially when they considered the Companys track record of missed shipments and the constant pressure of trying to push inventories on the distributors. No wonder that there was a level of hesitance, of skepticism that the distributors would agree to the Companys proposal.
The Companys sales force was properly prepared. The win-win nature of the replenishment solution was highlighted (the win for the Company and the win for the distributors). The sales force was engaged in constructing the buy-in presentations. Extensive role playing was done. The largest 68 distributors were chosen as the target for the initial effort, which was launched and completed in May 2005. To the astonishment of the sales force, all 68 distributors accepted the offer (with various degrees of enthusiasm). The following few weeks were tense for the top managers of the Company since the sales of their products to the major 68 distributors dropped sharply (while the surplus inventories the distributors were holding were flushed out). Then, sales went up and continued to creep up. Everyone was breathing normally again. Until the end of 2005, the replenishment initiative was extended to encompass an additional 500 distributors now covering over 65% of the sales of the Company. The sales increase, relative to the previous year, was about 30% much higher than the market growth. THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 4 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
Lets do an intermediate summary. We know that when production is improved it does have a positive impact on availability and therefore on sales. We know that holding the inventories in a plant warehouse, rather than pushing them to the regional warehouses, further improves availability. We know that putting the internal and more so the external distribution on the replenishment solution brings the availability from the distributors to almost perfect levels. The impact of all those improvements combined led to about a 30% increase in sales, an increase which was not associated with any increase in expenses or investments (the small investment needed for improving the plants capacity and the larger investment needed for the plant warehouses inventory were more than compensated by the much bigger reduction in the inventories in the regional warehouses).
But, what we also know is that the most powerful improvement, in terms of increasing sales, is to extend replenishment to the retailers. This is the most powerful step due to two main reasons. One reason is that the variability is the highest at the retail level, and as a result in retail the shortages are the highest (a distributor, and more so the Company warehouses, experience less variability due to the impact of aggregation). The second reason is that the pressure of limited shelf space and cash is the highest at the retail level and as a result a shop is holding a relatively low percentage of the available SKUs; a typical small shop holds about 5 SKUs (in India a small shop is really small) and a regular shop holds about 10 to 20 SKUs out of close to 100 SKUs available.
The replenishment solution, once it reaches the shops, reduces the shortages while reducing inventories. The higher the frequency of replenishment, the higher the impact increasing frequency of delivery from once a week to once a day practically eliminates shortages while reducing inventories to considerably less than half. Such a drastic reduction of inventory, and the realization that the Companys products sell very well relative to the investment in cash and space, induces the shops to extend the range they hold. Considerably less shortages, coupled with offering many more SKUs per shop, has a major impact on increasing sales.
The improvements in just the previous links of the supply chain had already yielded a 30% increase in sales. We were looking forward to the next decisive step extending our solution to retail a step that is expected to at least double that increase in sales. That would be the tipping point of the VV implementation.
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Let me elaborate on the last sentence. Suppose the conservative prediction that extending the replenishment to retail will only result in an additional 30% increase in sales. The improvements in the plants capacity can easily sustain the combined 60% increase in sales without adding any additional expenses. The total-variable-cost of the Companys products constitute about 60% of the sales prices; the Throughput is 40% of sales. That means that, at that stage of the VV implementation, the net profit of the Company will be increased by (0.6x0.4=) more than 20% of the previous sales. Before the VV project, the Companys net profit was slightly above the average for its industry, about 6% on sales. Now it is expected to reach 20% profit on sales, a level of performance never heard of before in that industry. Think what a positive impact it will have on the morale of the employees and the confidence of the shareholders.
But to see the real impact, we have to examine the impact these improvements have on the other links of the Companys supply chain and as a result on the tangible opportunities that will open up.
The distributors already enjoy an increase of 30% in sales associated with about a 40% decrease in inventory. The further increase due to extending replenishment to the shops will not cause any meaningful increase in inventories the distributors will have to hold since the frequency of shipments to the shops will be increased (and by that smoothing the demand from the distributors). The prime measurement of the distributors is inventory turns; an improvement of 10% in inventory turns is regarded as very good news. The inventory turns of the distributors will be improved by (1.6/0.6=) over 250%. That fantastic increase guarantees that the Company will not have any problems attracting the vast number of new distributors required to cover the rest of the Indian market (expanding the reach of the Company from 2.5 million shops to the existing 6.5 million). That expansion will again increase meaningfully the sales and profits of the Company.
The real, unlimited, potential is revealed when we examine the impact that extending the replenishment solution has on retail. Does our solution have any impact on retail? At first glance, it seems unlikely since the Companys products constitute less than 5% of a shops sales.
What about giving it a second glance? The large stores that sell mainly FMCG are the supermarkets. Maybe you are not aware of the fact that 2% profits on sales are considered very good for supermarkets in the Western world; the mark-up of the supermarkets on FMCG is about 15- 35% but the net profit is much smaller due to the expenses and more THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 6 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
so due to the inherent conceptual ineffectiveness of the mode of operation (maybe, one of these days, Ill devote an article to this subject).
Dont have too much pity on supermarkets. Considering the large sales volumes and the relatively small investments, 2% profit on sales makes supermarkets a very good business. The mark-up of a small shop in India is less than the mark-up of supermarkets in the western world, the expenses are much smaller, but the conceptual mode of operation and therefore the ineffectiveness, are the same. The combined effect is that most small shops in India make less than 1% net profit on sales.
Considering such tiny profit percentages and realizing that the shops sales are composed of the sales of many types of products each representing at most just a few percent of sales, the shop owners of small stores are extremely sensitive to which products are selling well and which are not, and act accordingly. In large stores, the prime measurement that guides which product will get more shelf space and which will be dropped is sales/shelf. An increase of 50% in sales of the Companys products, an increase that is not associated with increasing inventory or shelf space, is bound to elevate them to the top of the favorite products of the shops, big and small. *
* It is important to note that, for all practical purposes, the competitor cannot counter it. To emulate what our Company is doing is very difficult; read on to see the enormous psychological barriers that are standing in the way. For the competitors to react in the quick traditional way of rebates, gifts, or a plain reduction in price is also impossible as can be clearly deduced by the following calculation. Assume that our Companys products represent as low as 2% of the shops sales and the accumulated increase in sales was only 60%. Further suppose a low margin of the shops, just 10%. For a competitor to match our impact on the shops profitability he will have to decrease his prices to the shop by 6% practically wiping out all of his profits.
A shop experiencing such a positive impact from selling our Companys products, will certainly welcome offerings of other products of the Company. Especially if the Company will choose products on which the shops traditionally have higher mark-ups. The expansion of the replenishment offer to the shops opens wide the possibility to streamline new products to the market. Only the future will show how well utilized was the opportunity to harvest the impact, on the Companys future sales and profits, of easy introduction of new products through its improved distribution and sales.
In November 2005, I was disappointed to find out that no effort was yet taken to continue to the next link of the supply chain: the retail. Considering that at that stage I was already spoiled by the go-getter attitude of this Company, you can imagine my frustration when I was witnessing apparent procrastination. No wonder that as 2006 drifted THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 7 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
along and still no efforts were initiated to seriously approach the retailers, I started to put some gentle, and then less gentle, pressure. What we faced can be described as paralysis. Actually considering the number and intensity of the reservations that were raised to support the argument that there is no point in approaching the shops with the replenishment offer, the attitude can be better described as active paralysis (if such a phrase does not exist, it sure needs to).
What caused such a drastic change in behavior?
I pondered this question for a long time. On one hand, all my experience leads me to believe that there are people who are more open-minded than others. On the other hand, characterizing people as open-minded people and conservative people, as action-oriented people and procrastinators, will lead to the ridiculous conclusion that the managers of the Company all went through an almost instant transformation.
A plausible explanation might be provided by the wide-spread opinion that peoples behavior is dependent on their comfort zones; when people are operating within their comfort zone you can expect open minds and action, when they are pushed outside their comfort zone expect hesitance and resistance.
Personally, it is not easy for me to accept such an explanation, not without a precise definition of the term comfort zone, not without a clear description of the mechanism that connects comfort zone to attitudes.
What is a comfort zone?
It is customary to think that a comfort zone is an area where a person feels that he has control or at least a sufficient amount of influence. That can explain the behavior of our Companys management. As long as they addressed their own operation, an area where they have full control, they moved like blue lightning. Once they had to go out of the Companys boundaries, to the distributors, the first signs of hesitation appeared. Still, since the arrangement with the distributors is based on exclusivity the distributors store and sell only the products of our Company the management of the Company felt they had sufficient influence over their distributors, and they moved (first cautiously and then aggressively). But when it reached the retail where the products of the Company constitute only a small fraction of a shops sales the management of the Company felt that they certainly didnt have any THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 8 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
control or even sufficient influence and that is when the behavior changed.
Even though the above explanation does fit all the facts that we saw in this Company, it also indicates that unless we find a way to have some level of effective control or influence over the retail, management will continue to drag their feet. That prediction is in direct conflict with what I have witnessed in so many other situations. Take, for example, the common situation of a manufacturer of parts that are sold to another manufacturer. In most such cases, there are plenty of competitors and the parts that are sold represent a small fraction of the client purchases, which means that, definitely, the supplier doesnt have any effective control or influence over its clients. Still, in most such cases, we didnt have major difficulty convincing the suppliers to approach their clients with a radically untraditional offer.
To fit all the facts, those that were observed in this Company and those that have been observed in part manufacturers, examine the opinion that a comfort zone has less to do with control and more to do with knowledge. Suppose that a comfort zone is defined as a zone where a person feels that he has sufficient knowledge of cause and effect, of what is going to be the likely outcome of an action, of what is going to be the likely response to a suggestion. *
*Such knowledge does lead to the ability to effectively influence the situation and therefore it is no wonder that comfort zones are associated with control and influence.
According to this definition, pushing a person outside his comfort zone is describing the following scenario: 1. A suggestion is raised (pushed) to take a specific action in order to reach a specific desirable effect. And 2. The person, based on his knowledge of the relevant cause and effect, is convinced that the suggested action cannot cause (or has a small chance to cause) the desirable effect.
According to the above definition it is obvious that we should expect resistance when the person is holding different cause-and-effect than we use. How much resistance? Well, it depends on what led our clients to believe in their existing cause-and-effect. I now believe that we better distinguish between two different types of situations - one where people have experience and the other where people do not.
The first type is when we try to convince people to change rooted ways of behavior they have practiced for decades; like the changes we suggested to the managers of this Company regarding their production THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 9 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
and distribution. In the past we regarded these cases as the most difficult ones to change. I dont think so any more. Not that they are easy but the other type is much more difficult.
In the first type of situations, the cause-and-effect connections of our clients were based on enormous experience. The flaws they had in some of their cause-and-effect connections stemmed, not from lack of experience, but from the fact that they were operating under a wrong paradigm (usually their previous paradigm stemmed from one way or another of exercising local optima). The mere fact that our suggestion is based on cause-and-effects that are taken from another paradigm means that by raising our suggestion we do push our clients outside their comfort zone. To fully realize it, imagine the reaction of our clients if we were to present the needed actions without any explanation. Would anybody follow our suggestions and implement these changes? Not a chance!
This is the reason that in those cases we are careful to first explain the logic of the new paradigm and assist them in using their vast experience to validate it. The fact that they do have a lot of relevant experience helps us in two ways. The first one, as we said, is that they can use their experience to quickly verify and embrace the new cause- and-effect. The second, is that their experience helps them to put the fine details that are needed to fully adjust our suggestions to fit their specific circumstances.
That is not the case in the second type of situations we might witness in a VV implementation - situations where our suggested actions relate to an area where they do not have any first-hand experience. In such a situation their cause-and-effect connections are based on extrapolation from areas where they do have a lot of experience and that extrapolation might be flawed; in extreme cases such extrapolation might not even be relevant.
An example of the less extreme case is when we asked the Company to extend the replenishment mode of operation to the distributors. The managers experience is based on the reality of their company, a reality in which inventory turns are not regarded as a crucial measurement; it is just one of the many measurements used. Extrapolating from that experience to the distributors environment - where inventory turns is the prime operational measurement - led to the prediction that not passing control on the orders will be much more important to the distributors than improving their inventory turns. No wonder that the managers could not predict the positive reaction of their distributors. Still, in this case, the management experience did encompass the THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 10 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
inventory turns measurement and their hesitations could be overcome by a good-enough explanation of the distributors environment.
That is not the case when we suggested extending the replenishment solution to the retail. A FMCG retailer is happy with 2% profit on sales. A FMCG retailer regards a product line that comprises 5% of his sales as a major product line. A FMCG retailer is used to very low gross margins (<15%). The constraint of FMCG is display space (and cash). As a result, a FMCG retailer is using, as the most important operational measurement (formally or just intuitively) the measurement of sales/shelf.
Our Companys management gained their experience in a very different environment; 2% profit on sales is considered a disaster; all sales are derived from mainly two product lines; a gross margin of 30% is regarded as a lousy margin; the constraint is never display space (and rarely is it cash). But the biggest difference, a difference that makes extrapolation from one environment to the other almost irrelevant, is that our Companys management never developed the intuition of working under the whip of the sales/shelf measurement.
No wonder that when the management of the Company were evaluating the likely response of the retail to an offer which is based on the replenishment solution they are bound to reach the erroneous conclusion that such an offer will be of limited attraction to the retail; that any difficulty in implementing this offer, will cause the retailers to reject it out of hand.
Even the best explanation of the retail environment is not sufficient to persuade the managers of the Company since they lack the experience needed to check and internalize the new (to them) cause-and-effect connections. Also, an explanation is far from being enough to provide them with solid reference base required to supply the fine details that are needed to fully adjust our suggestion to fit the specific circumstances.
When the cause and effect connections are based on an irrelevant extrapolation, explanations are not sufficient. If an explanation is not sufficient, what can be done to cause the required change?
Lets first start with what should not be done do not compromise. Unfortunately, when facing strong resistance - resistance that translates into active paralysis - the natural reaction of the people who push for the change is to compromise. This is a grave mistake. Since the tendency to compromise is so strong, and since people tend to confuse THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 11 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
between compromising and taking prudent actions to convey a message, lets elaborate on it.
A compromise would be to sweeten the offer to the retailers, by augmenting the offer with some rebates or gifts. It is a compromise because it accepts the erroneous starting point that the replenishment offer, on its own merit, is not attractive enough to the retail.
A compromise would be to use the same system used for implementing the replenishment offer in the previous links rather than putting the time, analysis and efforts to tailor the procedures to the specifics of the retail. It is a compromise because it accepts the erroneous starting point that the replenishment offer will not yield big enough benefits. Big enough to dwarf the efforts needed for modifying the procedures. *
* When a shop holds less than 20 SKUs and the quantities delivered to one shop are a tiny fraction of a truck load, using the computerized system that was used for distribution rather than a prudent manual system, is cumbersome and wasteful.
A compromise would be to stay with the existing frequency of delivery to the retail. It is a compromise because it accepts the erroneous starting point that the retailer will not see the replenishment offer as attractive enough to do some additional efforts from his side. It is a compromise because it accepts the erroneous starting point that the replenishment offer will not yield big enough benefits to justify increasing transportation costs. It is a particularly bad compromise because it compromises on the very essence of the solution; it squashes the resulting large increase in sales.
Now, I hope, what should not be done is somewhat clearer. Never compromise on the starting point. Never accept the erroneous cause- and-effect as a base for modifications or lack of them.
One should start with a good explanation of the new area/situation - the area/situation to which the suggested action relates and in which management does not have first hand experience. A good explanation means giving the facts that substantiate the correct cause-and-effect connections, but not less important, proving by those facts that their current extrapolations are not valid. Dont expect full embrace of the new cause-and-effect connections, what you should expect is that management starts to doubt the validity of their extrapolated connections and the possibility that the connections you have presented might be plausible. References, if they are close enough to the situation, might be helpful at this stage. Still, dont be overly surprised if they just trigger a but our case is different type of rejection. Even if your impression is that they have fully agreed with you, you must take THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 12 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
into account that they do not have the needed experience and therefore it is too much to expect that they fully internalized the new cause-and- effect connections, and it is foolish to expect that they will be able to construct the required detailed modifications.
These are the reasons why the next step should be to launch a test. The test should not be regarded as a delaying tactic (which so many tests are) but as the decisive step to decide on the future actions of the Company. Therefore, as part of deciding on the test the executive committee should demand to periodically review the results (otherwise the importance of the test might deteriorate to the extent that no one will bother to even analyze the results).
It is important to design the test to accomplish two different objectives: 1. To realize the level of acceptance/rejection of the offer. 2. To get a numerical sense of the magnitude of the results (e.g. sales increase).
It is imperative to help the management in the design of such tests otherwise grave mistakes are likely to happen; mistakes that might distort reality.
For example, a likely mistake on the first objective is the case where the managers of the Company might not be aware that in many big stores there is a major bottleneck in the download dock. A big stores hesitation about increasing the load at the download dock due to excessive deliveries might be understood as hesitation on the replenishment offer and therefore the Company might get the erroneous impression that the replenishment solution is more suitable for small shops.
An example for a mistake that can occur regarding the second objective is not realizing in full the impact decreasing inventories has. In the large stores it is important to tie any future reduction of inventory to a commitment to preserve the current shelf space (otherwise the increase in sales will decay after a while). In small stores it is important to tie any future reduction of inventory to a commitment to expand on the number of different SKUs the store is holding (otherwise, half of the potential increase in sales may not be realized).
There are many more such examples but the real question is: When the people who are pushed outside their comfort zone dont have the experience to judge whether or not the cause-and-effects underlying our suggestion have merit (cause-and-effect that is in direct contradiction to the one they assumed) is an explanation enough to THIS IS AN INTERNAL GOLDRATT GROUP DOCUMENT. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION Comfort Zones Page 13 Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2007
cause them to invest the considerable time and efforts needed to launch, monitor and analyze a test? Dr. Deming repeatedly said that it is much more difficult to do rework than doing something right the first time. In this Company we reacted to the initial resistance with compromises. Rework is needed. After losing close to one and a half years is it still possible to put things back on track?
I tried. For close to two hours I gave the explanation of the reality of retail. I explained the governing cause-and-effect, the role of sales/shelf. I even, at the end, gave one reference from a similar environment. I suggested a test, laid out its details and highlighted what results should trigger which conclusions/actions.
And it worked. Within two weeks (and without any further encouragement from our side) the Company had already launched a wide - much too wide - test.
I learned a lot from this case; learned in what situations it is imperative to insist on tests. To my delight I didnt have to change my opinion about people: peoples behavior is not arbitrary. Open-minded people will not necessarily agree with me - not when my argument doesnt make sense to them. But open-minded people do listen and if I explain (and when it is important) they are willing to invest in re-evaluating their cause-and-effect connections.