Why Social Interventions Succeed or Fail: Our Binding Concern

June evenings in Bethel, Maine, are ordinarily comfortably cool. This one was no exception. While slipping into my jacket, I turned to the fellow who was walking alongside me and said, “Wow, that meeting had some ending. I mean, Clovis’ comment really turned things around.” Because, along with other members of our group, this fellow and I had introduced ourselves only a day earlier at the first meeting of National Training Laboratory’s (NTL’s) 1965, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Applied Behavioral Science intern program, I remembered that his name was Warner Burke.

“It did turn things around” he answered, adding, “But I wonder why?” He went on, his tone thoughtful,

“Others said as much earlier in the session. Did it need that history to have its impact? Or, did it have impact because of who said it—because it was one of the senior people? Or, was it because of the particular words that were used?”

He paused, then said, “I don’t know. Perhaps it was a result of a special combination of some, or maybe all, of these possibilities?”

After much more than an hour of passionate discussion about the possible “why’s” that Warner had raised, when our wristwatches showed that it was a few minutes short of 11 p.m., we ended our conversation, said “see you tomorrow,” and waved good-bye. Walking away, I knew that even if no certain answers had emerged from our late-night exchange, thanks to Warner Burke I’d learned something about intervention in groups that, for all its value, the evening’s earlier experience was unable to teach. By asking why, rather than by thoughtlessly experiencing, enshrining, or belittling a practitioner’s work, without either arrogance or self-aggrandizement Warner had gently opened a door through which I eagerly passed, just as scores of others would do in the decades that followed.

Two years after the 1965 NIMH Applied Behavioral Science intern program ended in mid-summer, 1967, still pursuing the “whys,” Warner and I coauthored an article, “An Attempt to Integrate Instrumented and T-Group Training” (Burke & Hornstein, 1967), sparked by work that we were doing with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Published in the Training and Development Journal, the article discussed synergies for individuals’ learning that resulted from educational experiences that take advantage of compatibilities between instrumented and experiential training. Afterwards, sticking with our quest to explore the “whys,” we worked together on two books that attempted to expand insight into the causal connections between intervention and change in social systems. The first, Social Intervention: A Behavioral Science Approach (with B. B. Bunker, M. Gindes, & R. J. Lewicki) was published in 1971 (Hornstein et al., 1971). And the second, The Social Technology of Organization Development (Burke & Hornstein, 1972), was published in 1972. Although the two books differed in many ways, their formats were similar: Sections containing essays describing interventions were preceded by authors’ essays containing discussions of the possible why’s underlying the interventions’ effects. In the case of Social Intervention, the sections were Individual Change Strategies of Social Intervention, Techno-Structural Strategies of Social Intervention, Data-Based Strategies of Social Intervention, Organization Development: Cultural Change as a Strategy of Social Intervention, Violence and Coercion as Strategies of Social Intervention, and Non-violence and Direct Action as Strategies of Social Intervention. And, in the case of The Social Technology of Organization Development, they were Team Building, Managing Conflict, Techno-structural Intervention, Data Feedback, and Training.

Again, as we worked together on these books, Warner was both my colleague and teacher. As a colleague he joined with me in doing all the editing, collating, commenting, and clerical stuff that needed doing. (More then, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, than today.) But, as a teacher, he gently and lovingly redirected my inclination toward becoming either awed by or dismissive of practitioners’ claims of success. Using questions and examples, he guided me into staying focused so that we might complete the task that we had set for ourselves: To ask why some efforts led to certain outcomes—what general principles explained the connections? Complete success in answering that question eluded us then, some 50 years ago, and it still does now. But, as Warner seems to have always understood, without diminishing what some gifted practitioners intuitively do to produce successful change, the question of why remains fundamental. After all, understanding why provides principle-driven guidelines for redesigning the shape of what in order to better fit both practitioners’ and clients’ circumstances, thereby lifting an intervention’s chance of success.

Regardless of whether we were jointly authoring professional publications or working as co-staff on programs like NTL’s Program for Specialists in Organization Development (PSOD), our time together produced a brotherly companionship that was both filled with, and fed by, laughter, confessions, and tears. Then, unexpectedly, because Warner and I had become dear buddies as well as close colleagues, events at the start of the 1978-1979 academic year at Teachers College, Columbia University, where I was Professor in the Social/Organizational Psychology program, presented me with a personal and professional dilemma.

Here are the bare-bone facts: The College authorized hiring a scholar-practitioner for our program. It identified members of a search committee, designating me as the committee’s coordinator. I firmly believed that Warner was unusually well qualified for the position and he was a dear friend who I desired as a close colleague. However, I had to be completely neutral, as my position required, and therefore vigilantly sculpted a role for myself that prevented me from consciously or unconsciously swaying other committee members. I scheduled applicants and hosted their visits, scrupulously avoiding disclosing my thoughts or evaluations lest I bias others’ judgments. I very much wanted Warner to join us, but I wanted him to be selected because of his exceptional qualifications, not because of my influence. As it turned out, my worries were for naught. In the springtime, when a secret vote was taken, Warner was far and away the candidate of choice.

To my delight, he accepted the offer (taking the office next to mine) and joined our group in the fall of 1980. In the years that followed he became a cherished mentor for our students, a valued citizen of the College’s community, and a guy with whom I have had lots more time to share laughs, confessions, and tears. And a guy from whom I still learn, even now always reminded to ask “why?”