Need-response follow-up

The 2nd step in the need-response process

What

Why

Who

How

Next

Coda

Need-response process chart

Downloadable brochure

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Follow-up message template

	Anankelogy Foundation, 126 E Kilgore, Ste 400 #469, Portage Mi 49002
	[DATE] Recipient Name Recipient address City ST 00000 Dear Recipient: This follows up a message you should have received from [NAME]. And fulfills the second in eight steps of a dedicated wellness journey. [NAME] is committing to improving their wellness amidst challenges presented by power differentials. We identify your relation with [NAME] as a power differential. [NAME] now invites you to help them address their need to [NEED]. Without your cooperation, the need will likely remain unresolved and produce a bad outcome. And that risks compromising your legitimacy. Need-response is a new professional service specializing in helping power differentials shift from provoking negative outcomes into cultivating positive ones. Learn more from the enclosed brochure. Thank you, /S/

This follows up the initial alert to a power problem identifying the receiver’s involvement. The previous message followed a basic business professional format. Similar to what you get in a late payment notice from a service provider.

  A)  Affirming the receiver’s value to the sender or affirming their apparent need(s).

  B)  Bringing up the need(s) the receiver apparently impacts in this power differential.

  C)  Continuing to cultivate mutual rapport to cooperatively solve this power problem.

That brief message initiates the need-response process. This follow-up provides more details to answer some likely questions.

1) What is need-response?

Need-response is a new profession focused on identifying and addressing underserved needs. Specifically, it addresses needs shaped by power differentials. Where one side impacts the other side more than being impacted by it.

The impactor impacts the power differential more than impacted by them.

The impactee is impacted by the power differential more than impacting it.

For example:

• Employer-employee

• Supervisor-supervised

• Doctor-patient

• Teacher-student

• Police-civilian

• Counselor-client

• Politician-voter

• Media outlet-viewer

And many more.

If receiving a follow-up, you are identified as an “impactor” to the “impactee” who sent it to you. You could be an impactee in other relations, such as your supervisor or to government authorities.

As an impactor, you typically enjoy more control over outcomes than the impactees under your influence. If a conflict emerges, you usually get your way more than the impactee.

Consequently, power differentials impact wellness. Both on a personal level and on a societal level.

Only need-response seeks to resolve needs to solve problems. Only need-response links this proper resolution of needs to measurable wellness outcomes. And only the professional service of need-response works to accountably improve the health of society as a whole.

2) Why need-response?

Where can the vulnerable impactee go with their power problem need? Such as…

• Wrongly convicted innocent persons refused justice by the errant courts.

• Patients in pain exploited to accept expensive medical care leading to debt.

• At-will employees coerced to take on an exhausting workload.

Lawyers can help apply the law, but the legal process can do little to stop exploitive impactor behavior that is legal. Besides, the legal options prematurely pit parties against each other. And legal battles offer pain relief to the winning side without any accountability for resolving the underlying needs.

Psychotherapists can offer emotional support, but many problems persist outside of one’s internal processes. As the Indian sage Krishnamurti put it, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Political and judicial options easily slip into problems themselves. Only need-response offers a viable alternative to the toxic legalism that taints these institutions. Consider these two examples.

• Need-response incentivizes mutuality instead of legalistic adversarialism. Politics and the courts needlessly provoke mutual defensiveness, and squanders human potential to empathize when rushing into a conflict.

• Need-response incentivizes engagement instead of legalistic alienation. The law privileges impactors to avoid whatever they find uncomfortable about impactees.

Only need-response aims to fill the gaps left open by lawyers and psychotherapists, when a client is faced with a problem beyond their control. Only need-response prioritizes inflexible needs over arbitrary law exploitable by the powerful. And only need-response aims to remove cause for pain by getting to its source—unresolved needs.

3) Who is it for?

This need-response process is for every impactee in a power differential who cannot resolve some stubborn need or needs. Resolving that need will improve their wellness and decrease their pain.

This process is not only for the impactee but also for the impactor who needs legitimacy. By helping the impactee to resolve their need, the impactor earns the public’s trust. And the impactee is incentivized to vouch for it, and even provide a testimonial for the impactor.

The need-response process indirectly serves lawyers with clients who cannot sue an impactor for illicit actions privileged by law. With a business associate agreement, the need-responder can complement the lawyer’s efforts by incentivizing that impactor to honor the impactee’s need.

The need-response process indirectly serves psychotherapists with clients who they cannot fully help because of a power problem need. With a business associate agreement, the need-responder can complement the psychotherapist’s efforts to reduce their client’s anxiety by getting to its source.

Only need-response accountably addresses all the needs in a conflict. Only need-response holds impactors accountable with incentivized reason to be measurably responsive. And only need-response prioritizes the inflexible needs over laws, which ostensibly exist to serve such intractable needs.

4) How does it work?

The process puts both the impactor and impactee on a level playing field. Both are incentivized to understand and honor the need(s) of the other.

After each step in the first half of the need-response process, each side assess the other’s trustworthiness. No one side gains advantage over the other. No one is to be exploited under color of law.

1. Impactor responsive status –

2. Impactee responsive status –

significantly untrustworthy

moderately untrustworthy

not yet assessed

moderately trustworthy

significantly trustworthy

The process is open to suggestions, recommendations and requirements for how to improve one’s rating status. Both ways.

After each step in the second half of the need-response process, each side gets assigned by the other into one of these informative categories of responsiveness.

offensive

substandard

standard

admirable

exemplary

• offensive: disputed or hostile toward expressed need

• substandard: dismissive of any role in expressed need

• standard: sympathetic but no responsiveness to the expressed need

• admirable: presented responsiveness to the expressed need

• exemplary: demonstrated responsiveness to the expressed need

By the second half of the process, the impactor’s responsiveness categories look a little different, in preparation for accrediting their legitimacy.

• Admirable becomes competitive.

• Exemplary becomes transformative.

offensive

substandard

standard

competitive

transformative

If what gets measured gets done, then the impactor will gradually convert their privately assessed responsiveness to publicly available legitimacy accreditation.

This could all change by the time you read this. And there is much more to cover on how the need-response process works. We will have to learn it together as the rubber meets the road. But we’re confident we are introducing you to something exquisitely wonderful.

Only need-response creates a bridge to link to those who need to speak truth to power and those who need to listen to those impacted. Only need-response creates a bridge of mutual benefit to turn power differential conflicts into beneficial opportunities for both sides. And only need-response aims to improve societal wellness by improving the responsiveness to needs of those in power.

And what’s next?

In its current design, this follow-up provides the second of many steps. It offers more context than the brief message sent earlier. Unless altered, the next step aims to cultivate mutual good faith.

This chart presents the need-response process as it is currently designed. Keep in mind how this untested process will remain in flux, as realities on the ground will alter its contours. Indeed, no plan survives contact with the enemy, whoever that is.

As now designed, each step and action is either initiated by the impactee or by a need-responder on behalf of that impactee.

NEED-RESPONSE PROCESS CHART

No.	Step	Action
1	alert	Contacts the impactor to report a power problem need using the ABC communication format, with the opportunity to help solve it.
	if impactor unresponsive	Sends a follow-up that rates the impactee’s responsiveness to the impactee’s mutuality intent, which can expose the impactor’s incompetence or neglect.
	transition when responsive	Shifts from alienation to engagement, by recognizing the objective fact of needs and affected wellness we all impact in one other.
2	follow-up	Recaps expressed power problem need with added context, plus details about this pioneering alternative.
	if impactor unresponsive	Proceeds with next step of cultivating mutual trust along with identifying the benefits that could be missed. Hesitation expected.
	transition when responsive	Shifts from obliviousness to awareness, by acknowledging how negative impacts can be cooperatively turned into positive ones.
3	good faith	Cultivates mutual trust to relate to each other in good faith by incentivizing each other’s positive intent toward each other.
	if impactor unresponsive	Proceeds with next step of sending the impactee’s limited options which could expose the impactor’s bad faith & unprofessionalism.
	transition when responsive	Shifts from distrust to trust, by cultivating empathy for each other’s affected needs and liberating potential for social love.
4	options	Presents the impactee’s standard and alternative options for dealing with the power problem in this power differential.
	if impactor unresponsive	Suggests the listed adversarial & avoidance options will not be waived if the impactor does not opt for the preferrable mutuality option.
	transition when responsive	Shifts from impact disparity to impact parity, by addressing each other’s needs on an equal basis, removing distortions.
5	law-fit	Identifies the needs to be served by applicable laws and checks how toxic legalism fails to serve impactee and impactor needs.
	if impactor unresponsive	Proceeds with next step of sending an exaction invoice itemizing hidden costs of privileged coercion.
	transition when responsive	Shifts from legalism to responsivism, by acknowledging threat of legally privileged harms to trustworthiness and recognizing better outcomes when shifting from react culture norms to social love.
6	exaction invoice	Itemizes the hidden coercions costing the impactee their full wellbeing, then invites the impactor to earn legitimacy in lieu of financially compensating these documented structural exactions.
	if impactor unresponsive	Informs the impactor that the itemized list could be used as evidence if impactee must revert to their adversarial options.
	transition when responsive	Shifts from ascribed legitimacy to earned legitimacy, by having impactee accredit impactor’s public trustworthiness after they demonstrably help impactee to resolve their power problem need.
7	mutuality process	Coordinates mutual support to properly resolve each other’s identified needs, spelled out in a Memorandum of Understanding.
	if impactor unresponsive	Barred from having any further harmful impact on others by supporting impactee to sever all ties to such an impactor.
	transition when responsive	Shifts social contract standard from manipulated consent to improved outcomes, by measurably improving outcomes that ground authority in properly resolved needs.
8	liberty	Pledges to mutually honor needs, both the power problem need & accredited legitimacy, spelled out in a Memorandum of Agreement.
	if impactor unresponsive	Avows to resolve needs unilaterally, with or without impactor cooperation, spelled out in an assertive Declaration of Liberty.
	transition when responsive	Shifts from societal sickness complicity to societal wellness support, by properly resolving needs together to solve structural problems.

Coda

We encourage you to critique the process, to point out any gaps, question anything confusing, and kindly challenge our faulty assumptions. How can we improve this to better serve you? Comment below.

We’re bracing for likely resistance to something so new, so different, so aspirational during a time of low bar pragmatism and pessimism. But failure is not an option.

So pardon our dust. We’re going to build something amazing together that the world sorely needs right now. And you are on the ground floor of this inspiring solution.

Know anyone who could benefit from this? Then please share the news by sharing this link. Let’s spread some love.

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Trifold brochure (pdf)

Click this cover image to open in a new tab

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