Bardach's Eightfold Path Lays Out

Bardach's Eightfold Path lays out a method for addressing a problem that is generally resistant to a simpler path. Bardach's strategy allows for a number of fresh starts and regroupings. As such, it bears little in common with the better known Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, a life plan for freeing the self of attachment and desires.

Brabach is not interesting in understanding Truth, although (to be fair) he is interested in helping people to discover partial truths and helping them to let go of some of the compulsivity that can run through and destabilize a life. His four and fifth steps -- to construct alternatives to a way of doing something and to establish criteria -- do offer the possibility of breaking old patterns.

For example, a manager who can rally his workers to be more productive and a better integrated team but cannot sustain this new work ethic could look to these two steps and use them to reframe his strategy. One of the most deadly traits in management is to attempt to remedy past mistakes by trying the same remedy in spades. Sometimes the most effective strategy is to stop and be still, at least metaphorically.

One of the key ways in which Brabach's model is in fact like that proposed by Buddha is that he understands that force is usually not the best way to proceed. By stopping and asking oneself about alternatives and then proceeding to the next step of establishing criteria for a new strategy, a manager can understand what the logjam is in his current strategy. For example, he might decide that he simply needs to reframe his concept of success.

An alternative framework to demanding that his workers perform at their top capacity at all times -- something that is simply not possible -- is that the manager can conceive of his work schedule in segments. During some of these segments, he expects his workers to go all out.

In order to ensure that this is not overwhelming for his workers and does not discourage them -- or build up serious levels of resentment -- the manager must make it clear that he is not expecting such a rate of work to be ongoing. Hard work that is rewarded by periods of relatively down time is much easier to maintain than is hard work that stretches off into the unending future.

By establishing new criteria -- such as that a certain amount of work has to be accomplished each month but that a flux of work can be allowed so that workers can accommodate demands at work to their own needs -- the manager can create a new way of looking at success that allows him to create a long-term workable partnership with his workers. Memo Two Anyone who has ever worked as a reporter is familiar with the idea of -- and the problems with -- a neutral point-of-view.

This model of writing, editing, and producing various types of texts requires that each significant point-of-view on an issue be represented fairly. Initially, this would seem to be an excellent policy: After all, the marketplace of ideas (as the Supreme Court has reminded us) is strengthened by adding more ideas, not by subtracting problematic ones. However, when one moves from the abstract to the particular and concrete, the problems with such a strategy become immediately clear.

To understand the depths of such a problem, one can consider the current political situation in Libya. A neutral point-of-view would require that a description of what has been happening in February in Libya include Muammar Gaddafi's assessment of what has been happening in the nation that he has ruled for over forty years. That viewpoint has shifted to some extent from day-to-day, but in general the military leader has argued that Al-Qaeda, Israel, and the United States are drugging young Libyans into attacking their government.

The rebels, meanwhile, argue that they are fighting for a more democratic, less corrupt nation. Western nations, as well as some of the other Arab nations, have in general sided with the viewpoint of the rebels, acknowledging the tyranny of Gaddafi's reign. No credible source from the West has suggested that Libyan youths are being drugged by outside forces. A neutral point-of-view would require that Gaddafi's viewpoint be given the same degree of weight as that of the United Nations.

After all, he is a central figure, someone who has access to a wide range of information, indeed far more information than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example. However, it should be immediately clear that there is.