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Wellness Matters
- Steph Turner
- Jul 17
- 13 min read
Updated: Jul 18
8-step program to address impact from power differentials
TLDR Summary |
Still in its infancy as a proof-of-concept model, this pioneering program addresses the impact of power differentials. Wellness Matters is the provisional name for this new need-responsive process that brings both sides of a power differential together to cooperatively solve problems, by mutually resolving needs. Win-win. |
A power differential occurs between an identifiable "impactor" and "impactee".
The impactor impacts the relation more than impacted by it. | The impactee is impacted by the it more than impacting it. |
For example:
Employer-employee
Creditor-debtor
Doctor-patient
Teacher-student
Police-civilian
Counselor-client
Politician-voter
Attorney-client
And many more.
The impactor typically gets what they want from the relation more than the impactee. The power diffrence tends to coax the impactee to sacrifice what they honestly need. Which can negatively affect the impactee's wellness and undermine the impactor's trustworthiness, or legitimacy. Not only on an individual transaction level, but also insitutionally and societally.
Power problems
Wellness Matters specifically exists to address "power problems". A power problem is one endured by the impactee from the power difference, and falls outside the scope of legal remedies and therapeutic adjustment. Which is why so many impactees suffer from them.
Each challenging problem translates into an opportunity to resolve a power-impacted need.
For example, the line worker suffers when her supervisor overloads her with added work because he trusts she is unlikely to complain about it directly to him. He could assign the work more equally among his staff, but is not legally required to do so.
Problem: work overload. Need: equitable delegation.
If her upbringing or values or cultural background makes it more difficult for her to vocalize her concern, then her boss is exploiting her silence in a legally privileged way. And why should she seek counseling to adjust to a situation not of her own making?
Click here for a list of more power problems & their related power needs
Power problem | Related need |
privileged discrimination cultural incompetence surprise billing rushed decision misinformation | social justice cultural competence transparent billing informed decison verifiable sources |
Such common problems could use a radical solution.
This pioneering service brings both sides together to serve the other. Instead of compelling attention with laws or reasoning to serve what each one needs, this process incentivizes each side with internal motivation to serve the other.
The impactee needs wellness,
from resolving a stubborn need.
The impactor needs legitimacy,
from earning trustworthiness.
Impactee needs wellness
The impactee needs to resolve a need with the impactor's cooperation. Until resolved, it objectively diminishes their capacity to fully function: their wellness.
Impactor needs legitimacy
The impactor must be trustworthy to their subordinate impactees. Until then, distrust undercuts the impactor's capacity to lead effectively: their legitimacy.
Only this new program from need-response incentivizes each to serve the need of the other. As the impactor helps the impactee resolve their need, restoring wellness, the impactee can vouch for the impactor's effective leadership, their legitimacy. Each needs the other.
Need-response is a new profession applying the new social science of anankelogy. Only need-response recognizes the objective fact of both the impactee's need and the impactor's need. Only need-response can design a program that recognizes the objective fact of each other's capacity level, of each other's affected wellness.
"Wellness Matters" serves as this program's current provisional name. It will likely change. Steph, its creator, serves as its first guinea pig client.
We break the program down into three main phases.
Prep: Getting the service user started on a sound footing.
Process: Walking the service user through its eight steps.
Product: Guiding the user to utilize the results of each step.
Prep
The service-user is always the impactee. The impactor can invite a subordinate to start the process, but as currently envisioned they can never start a process themselves.
The service captures the impactee-user's wellness baseline. This holds the process accountable to evidence-based outcomes.
This proof-of-concept version relies on an Excel spreadsheet to serve as a dashboard. Most of its 61 pages replicate the pair of impactor profile pages like pages 5 through 8 seen here.
The impactee-user brainstorms a list of power differentials with impactors currently affecting their life. Their employer, their creditors, their healthcare providers, etc.
From this list the impactee-user selects which to target first. Next, they identify potential peer supporters, who they will invite to follow their progress. Then the process gets under way.
Process
This proof-of-concept version experiments with this 8-step process. Which will likely evolve as it gets market tested. Each step identifies a challenge, then shifts it into an opportunity for Wellness Matters to address.
Step 1: Alert.
Power differentials tend to keep impactor and impactee alienated from each other. Wellness Matters introduces the impactor to the impactee's affected need, along with this opportunity to address it together, in a meaningful engaging way.
From alienation to engagement.
Step 2: Follow-up.
Power differentials tend to limit impactor's awareness of the actual impacts they have on others. Wellness Matters follows up on that initial alert to bring greater awareness to the challenges and underutilized opportunities of power differentials.
From obliviousness to awareness.
By following up on the initial alert message, introducing more of this process.
and brochure introducing th impactor to this program.
Step 3: Good faith.
Power differentials tend to sour rapport between impactor and impactee. Wellness Matters builds mutual trust by mutually assessing each other's responsiveness.
From distrust to trust.
By developing impact parity that nurtures mutual support for each other's needs.
Step 4: Options.
Power differentials tend to limit options available to impactees, to either react adversely or concede in silence. Wellness Matters adds the alternative of mutuality.
From power imbalance to impact parity.
By recognizing and shifting from standard poor options to a better option of mutuality.
Step 5: Law-fit.
Power differentials tend to enable the impactor to coerce compliance to those laws which advantage them and disadvantage the impactee. Wellness Matters ties each applicable law to the need or needs it exists to serve, along with the actual effects on each other's needs.
From legalism to responsivism.
By relating honestly to the inflexible needs constrained by flexible laws and legalism.
Step 6: Exaction invoice.
Power differentials tend to coerce the impactee to sacrifice value without just compensation. Wellness Matters itemizes the hidden imposed costs of a power differential interaction and then provides the impactor with opportunity to convert this into earned legitimacy.
From ascribed to earned legitimacy.
By converting itemized coerced costs to empirically demonstrated trustworthiness.
Step 7: Mutuality.
Power differentials generally rely on the social contract of "consent to law" which is often manipulated to suit the powerful. Wellness Matters raises the social contract standard to mutually improved wellness outcomes, measured in ways that cannot be manipulated.
From manipulated consent to improved outcomes.
Step 8: Liberty.
Power differentials tend to normalize the shrinking capacity of impactees and impactors to fully resolve their needs. Wellness Matters concludes this process by asserting the freedom to properly resolve needs with or without the cooperation of others.
From societal sickness complicity to societal wellness credit.
By pledging to properly resolve needs with or without the impactor's full cooperation.
Product
The above process produces each "product" as the conclusion of that step.
Alert draft message that alerts thee impactor to the impactee's underserved need.
Follow-up message and brochure to orient the impactor to this new service.
Good faith survey to assess each other's responsiveness.
Options menu, and if waived if impactor agrees to mutuality option.
Law-fit form to identify relevant laws and the needs involved.
Exaction invoice that itemizes hidden costs and invites conversion to earned legitimacy.
Memorandum of Understanding to mutually work out how best to address each other's needs in amicable terms.
Memorandum of Agreement that puts the negotiated MoU into actionable terms that prioritizes the liberty to properly resolve needs.
Unilateral or Cooperative
Each step provides the impactor a "unilateral track" in case the impactor exits or never responds. The preferred "cooperative track" leads to more value, but the service does not leave the impactor, with their inflexible needs, vulnerable to the whims of any impactor.
'No' is not an option
When invited to cooperate to help resolve the impactee's need, which the impactor affects, "no" is not an option. We move on without that impactor. Perhaps they will onboard later after realizing all that they are missing. Until then, the impactor must plow ahead.
Consequences
The uncooperative impactor may regret the consequences built into the program.
Options menu: adversarial options may be reasserted.
Exaction invoice: itemized items stand as documentation for potential legal contest.
Declaration of Liberty: impactee asserts right to properly resolve needs on thir own.
And other less pleasant results. Including FOMO. After demonstrating good faith intent and offering mutual regard for the impactor, it will be difficult for that impactor to politically rationalize their departure.
Adoption, of course, should be more for positive gains than unpleasant costs. But only by testing it in real time can we know for sure what actually works.
I am now testing this on myself with the impactors influencing my life. I need this service to improve my own wellness, as ethically questionable professionals hinder my ability to fully function. I begin by addressing three different types of power differentials.
1. Power differential type: healthcare provider/patient.
Problem: surprise medical billing. Need: transparent medical billing.
Despite transparent medical billing mandated by the 2022 Federal No Surprise Billing Act, some of my healthcare providers send me a bill I either do not owe or convince me to receive nonurgent care without an estimate of what it would cost me.
Is it worth sliding into medical debt to undergo an expensive medical examination that warns me of some future health risk that some lab result flagged? What about my current health need not to be subjected to financial stress?
2. Power differential type: creditor/debtor.
Problem: siloed transactions. Need: contextualized finances.
Each of my creditors remain ignorant of every other creditor and bill collector knocking on my door. Until now.
Each will now be informed of the context of my limited finances. Then challenged if their legally privileged economic pressures fall under predatory behavior exploiting the economically vulnerable.
3. Power differential type: employer/employee.
Problem: cultural incompetence. Need: cultural incompetence.
My supervisor and manager over him damage their rapport with me when trying to motivate me with emotion or when paternalistic toward me. Despite appearing as a white person like them, I am indigenous to the core (enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin).
The more culturally competent toward the culturally different, the more productive we all could be. These are impactors who interact with me each day. So I should be able to get through this process much more quickly with them.
Who's next?
After initial testing on myself and these impactors I target, I hope to find a handful of fellow impactees to continue testing this. They will likely be innovators who
struggle with at least one power problem,
is gravely aware of this power problem,
has a priority to solve it as soon as possible,
is currently seeking a solution to it, and
will willingly risk this untried solution.
Does that sound like you? If so and you're interested in helping this grow, click the Contact Me button below. I look forward to hearing from you and onboarding you to help try this visionary new service.
I need your help working out the bugs. To offer a complementary perspective. And to test any built-in assumptions.
Assumptions to test
Every new idea includes high-risk assumptions that could derail it if proven false.
"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." No market plan survives first contact with the market.
Sending out alerts to my impactors begins the process of testing my unproven beliefs. Will they validate or invalidate my calculated expectations? Here are some of my assumptions now put under the shredder.
Desirability
A significant percentage (25%?) of impactors will opt for our mutuality alternative over status quo options. Null: An insignificant percentage of impactors will opt for this mutuality alternative, which suggests we will have to pivot or maybe scrap the program. (Apply this null hypothesis to each assumption below.)
A significant percentage of impactees (20%) will trust this as a viable alternative to shaky ascribed legitimacy and agree to earn their legitimacy by accountably helping the impactee resolve their power need with this process.
A significant percentage of impactors (20%) will follow through all eight steps with the impactor.
A significant percentage of impactees (20%) will value a testimonial from a served impactee and/or their vouching for successfully helping them.
Viability
A significant percentage (25%) of impactees exposed to this option will eventually participate and pay for this new service.
The process will inspire a significant percentage of impactors to invest their own money to cultivate widespread improvements.
Click for a summary of the revenue model and its assumptions to test
Assumption: After a member of the public becomes aware of this service and takes interest in it, a significant number (20%) will enroll in our a free follower program.: "Your Needs Matter".
Your Needs Matter
Type: free educational program - introduces the objective fact of needs and how that measurably applies to others particpating in the Wellness Matters program, and can inspire hope in the each free follower with power problems of their own.
Cost: Free as in no charge at all.
Benefits: Receive routine reports of how this service is helping others, and how it can help the follower. Might include exclusive DIY content if subscribing to the podcast.
Assumption: A signficant percentage of YNM participants (15%) will sign up, with the 30-day trial, to try the WM program.
Assumption: A signficant percentage of trial period participants (50%) will continue to pay the monthly membership fee to participate in the WM program to address their own power problem and needs.
Wellness Matters
Type: personal "case" program - peer-supported or DIY process incentivizing individual impactors to work mutually with individual impactees to solve power problems and earn legitimacy.
Cost: $119.48 per month, lowered to $48.98 per month at the start.
Benefits: Proactively address problems not solvable by current legal or therapeutic options, which can boost wellness and unleash human flourishing potential.
Support: Peer supporters are often professional need-responders seeking to build rapport with the impactee, to encourage them to gain the value of their added support.
Assumption: A signficant percentage of WM participants (10%) will upgrade to the Results Matter option, if they gain the support of an increasing volume of grassroot backers.
Results Matter
Type: shared "project" program - a professional need-responder guides a group of impactees to work individually or collectively with impactors, especially those unresponsive at first, which can raise their legitiimacy to the laudible competitive level.
Cost in addiction to monthly membership fee: $150/week. This gets spread to supporters who invest as little as $30 each week, as a kind of crowdfunded venture.
Benefits: Receive regular (weekly?) group support led by a qualified professional need-responder, who is qualified to incentivize even the most stubborn impactor individuals and entitiies to improve their reach among their constituent base.
Support: Pro need-responders are typically trained psychotherapists with experience guiding group therapy, but learn to shift from psychotherapy to psychosociotherapy where the power relation dynamics is the subject to be changed and not the individuals themselves. We anticipate finding qualified candidates among psychotherapists disillusioned with psychotherapy as a profession. Perhaps that includes you.
Assumption: A signficant percentage of RM participants (5%) will upgrade to the Maturity Matter option, if they gain the support of an increasing volume of grassroot backers.
Maturity Matters
Type: collective "movement" program - one or more professional need-responders coordinate invested impactors working toward transformative structural change, to improve many impactee lives and raise impactor legitimacy to the exemplary transformative level.
Cost in addiction to monthly membership fee paid by impactees: $300 per billable hour, up to six hours per week, paid by the invested impactor entities, typically for support to create transformative structural change. No added cost to impactees.
Benefits: Backed by fully onboard impactors, guided by qualified pro need-responders shifting the focus from "consent to laws" that privilege the powerful to "measurable wellness outcomes" that fulfill the purpose of laws and carves open a path toward mutual human flourishing on a larger human scale.
Support: Pro need-responders are typically trained lawyers with experience applying laws to specifically address underserved impactee needs underserved in the adversarial legal process, which necessitates shifting from the adversarial role of attorney to the mutuality nurturing role of a "responsivist". We anticipate finding qualified candidates among lawyers disillusioned with law as a profession. Perhaps that speaks to you.
Assumption: A sufficient number of impactors will be inspired enough to invest thousands of dollars to transform social structures to liberate human potential and meaningfully solve deep seated structural problems.
Pro need-responder compensation
Each contracted professional need-responder directly receives 80% of the billed amount. They qualify to receive up to half of the withheld amount, as a performance bonus, if at the end of the process the impactor quantifiably improves their wellness outcomes in a way that quantifiably improves the impactor's trustworthiness to surveyed impactees.
Public Fund Pool
Any amount of that 10% balance not claimed by performance bonuses gets placed in a public fund pool. Impactees in the program can then request an interest-free loan to help cover any unexpected costs necessary to resolve their power need. The first loan will be set at a low amount (like $200) and the impactee cannot request another until paid back in full.
Of course, any of this could change overnight.
Feasibility
The impactee can find and use the targeted impactor's contact information, and this will lead to the impactor receiving the impactee's message.
Alerts sent directly from the Anankelogy Foundation provides a level of professionality that could incentivize the targeted impactor to take the message more seriously.
NOTE: Incorrect assumptions about contacting impactors or incentivizing their response could fast track the "unilateral track" in a not so legitimate way.
Would you like to see such a program succeed? Could you use such a service? Do you now suffer a power problem?
Each impactor may utilize this service to address an impactee who sits over them. Which could help this service go viral.
I want to hear from you. Especially if you're disillusioned by current institutional options.
Are you disillusioned with lawyers?
Are you disillusioned with psychotherapy?
Are you disillusioned with the adversarial judicial process?
Are you disillusioned with politics as usual?
If so, then let's build this out together. Perhaps I could partner with law schools. Perhaps you can add something I'm overlooking.
Am I missing anything? Want to learn more? Then follow its development.
Follow developments
Want to know what happens next? Follow developments on my Need-Response Podcast. Episodes drop every other Wednesday morning. As soon as I can start season three.
Because I need this service, I continue to struggle with personal challenges. My day job drains much of my energy, so I am best able to invest my efforts on the weekend.
I am seeking someone who can complement my limits. If left entirely to me, this may never get off the ground. Know of anyone who can help. I am open to suggestions.
Currently, I do not aim to launch a nonprofit for this. Not yet. I first aim to find a fiscal sponsor and another nonprofit to host this visionary program. I am open to suggestions.
I welcome your help to turn this into a going concern. Have any questions? Concerns? Insights? Comments? I look forward to engaging them with you, sooner than later.
Start responding to this now
Two ways you can provide your feedback.
Comment below. Share your input for all to see. Let others see any feedback to your comment. And see if you start a helpful public discussion.
Direct message. If you prefer to keep your message discreet, then use the button below to contact me personally. I will reply as soon as I can.
Thank you for your interest.
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