This page makes the connection between the missing Midlevel and the quantum condition in organizations. While only recently documented in organizations by Dr. Tom Blue, this condition has long existed, as dyslexia evolved long before writing did to, for one, better enable the individual to grasp this mind-boggling quantum state. Such a heightened grasp was evident in Albert Einstein’s dyslexia and in his close friend Niels Bohr’s dyslexia—Einstein in 1921 and Bohr in 1922 having won the Nobel Prizes in Physics for their major contributions to quantum mechanics.
Both were lefthanded which heightened their dyslexic gifts. Dr. Blue shares these two traits with them. These traits predisposed him to finding the quantum state in organizations, just as Einstein and Bohr did. On average 1 out of 167 times, authority (with a p value of .006 of h for what in atoms is a photon particle) does not stand out in a continuous quantum field in organizations, and 1 out of 1000 times responsibility (with a p value of .001 for L as the angular momentum of a wave cycle) doesn’t stand out either.¹⁵
So sight unseen, authority/responsibility mimic the particle/wave duality in Bohr’s h = 2πL jump in energy to the next energy level. As Bohr found, the levels are limited to n = 6, home to the Midlevel.²²
Here 2π represents the wave cycle of a photon that adds the extra energy (increases the wave frequency) at the next level up. A management hierarchy inverts this natural order by adding the energy to the next level down. Also unseen, half of a management structure (50.9%) is a vacuum seething with energy. When left to its own devices without an intervention, this unseen energy undermines an organization. In addition, it makes up 68% of the universe and 95% if you throw in the dark energy conserved as dark matter.
As physics professor, Glenn Starkman, said in an interview:¹⁰
So if you have twice as much vacuum as you had before, then you have twice as much of that energy… That’s really peculiar. If you take a box and stretch it, you get something for free. That’s the property that accounts for the ability of the vacuum to expand at an accelerating rate. The more you expand it, the more…you have, and the more that it pushes.
Moreover, this quantum state proves exceptionally robust in organizations with h for the quantum of action known to 105 trillion decimal places (the number of places that π is known). Then there’s the exponential equation for the length of resource commitments at each management level, as documented by Elliott Jaques in at least 100 organizations in 15 countries.¹³ It’s this equation that reveals the missing Midlevel with its 3-6 month span of resource commitments.
Out of this exponential equation comes an electromagnetic wave made up of a sine wave for authority (in blue) and a sine wave for responsibility (in red) at 90 degrees to each other that in turn generate each other.¹⁴ At any one time, either authority or responsibility is statistically significant, but not both at the same time in keeping with Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. With the p value for the statistical uncertainty always being positive, the jump in energy in the management level goes down to the next lower level, rather than up to the next higher level.¹⁵ Restated in everyday terms, it’s a catch 22 situation, in that when responsibility is random and authority is significant, an arbitrary demotion to the next lower management level looms 14 minutes out of every 40-hour workweek (40 hours x authority’s p value of .006 x 60 minutes). And here’s the catch in this catch 22: with responsibility clear 99.9% of the time (given its p value of .001 when authority is imaginary) the authority for doing the work (while physically present) is unknowable.¹⁵
Even with an intervention, it takes nothing short of Carl Rogers’ unconditional positive regard to build a task-centered group at the Midlevel.¹⁶ Most important is whether the person training the group learns right along with the group, as Carl Rogers emphasized in his client-centered approach. Taken into classrooms, students fill the Midlevel (over the Midlevel’s 3-6 month span of resource commitments) as they work and teach in teams with the instructor’s support and encouragement. You see, the ticket to an A is to teach, and not just the instructors.¹⁷ As they do in a classroom, groups that teach stabilize a management structure and raise the levels of performance (in class the grades) throughout an organization.
The Midlevel provides a gateway, a tunnel, into the organizational quantum condition and not just in classes. It’s a tunnel of group consciousness in that it takes a diverse group, as a whole, to begin to grasp the mechanics involved, something that no one individual can begin to do. As the Venn diagram shows,¹⁸ such a group consciousness among physicists steadily built towards a Theory of Everything.
From his hospital bed, Einstein worked on this theory until just hours before he died. Such a theory pulls together many fields of study and quantum fields going back to the BIG BANG, 13.8 billion years ago in a 180 million trillion trillion degree F singularity. So group thought might be considered an overarching quantum field, in itself, since it originated the theory of everything in the first place.
Given the physics, a Midlevel group pulls the management positions together into a superposition of the separate positions. The standing wave (to the left) comes from taking one of the sine waves in the electromagnetic wave, either for authority or responsibility and multiplying it by itself.¹⁹
An everyday example of a standing wave is a vibrating guitar string or piano string anchored at both ends. The areas under this standing wave give the chances of seeing members at the various management levels. You might have noticed the ▯Unavailable 2.4% (.006 x 4) in the tails of the standing waves. That’s because below the uncertainty of authority’s significance at p =.006 for Planck’s constant of h, there’s no room for h. Moreover, the standing wave represents the medium of transfer through which the electromagnetic wave of authority and responsibility travels.
So, within the confines of a workplace, time slows down, as it does in water.²⁴ This dilation of time is best shown in a right triangle, as on the left.²⁵ With a Midlevel intervention, you get the shorter side with 30 minutes following the path of least action, a cornerstone of physics.
Strange as it may seem, the details have been known for over 2500 years, ever since Pythagoras (570-495 BCE). The right triangle demonstrates his theorem: 60 minutes equals the square root of (52 minutes-squared plus 30 minutes-squared). As answer d. shows, you save 51 minutes per hour with the intervention. But without one, you’re on the 52-minute side, home to Sigmund Freud’s death drive. As mentioned on the home page, the death drive is the rush of entropy to ever increasing disorder. Instead of relishing least action and higher productivity (more production in less time) the death drive “takes specific pleasure precisely in what is most painful.”²⁶ It’s on the 52-minute side without an intervention where there’s the greatest potential for pain.
As shown in the standing wave, half the time people end up at the ▮Base Level with all that zero-point energy. Being in superposition, the Midlevel group not only has access to this energy, but also to the wide-ranging perspectives from every other management level. And such diversity cancels out error.²⁷ With the CEO a member, the group also has wide-spread influence, as in 1914 when James Lincoln first convened such a group at Lincoln Electric, or when a member of the group serves on the Board of Directors, as in 1999 Elliott Jaques, M.D., PhD outlined in a working paper.²⁸
Converting the standing wave into what you might call a Quantum Pie, we get the diagram on the right. This pie chart shows Zero-Point Energy at the base level at 50.9%, the Upper-Level Quantum Domain at 40.2% above the Midlevel, the Virtual Midlevel at 0.01% (at Bohr’s n = 6 quantum limit), the Lower-Level Quantum Zeno Range at 6.5% below the Midlevel, and the Unavailable portion at 2.4%. While this diagram seems simpler than the diagram of the standing wave (so why not use it?) it’s difficult to convey just how revolutionary this Quantum-Pie Approach to Management really is. It fills the Midlevel with a group, instead of solely relying on Henri Fayol’s (1841-1925) management pyramid. The people filling this virtual level as a group might say, “We’re more than ready, and it’s about time!”
Being virtual, the Midlevel has measurable, mediating effects on the other levels, which raises productivity across all the levels.²¹ Like virtual, mediating particles—the Midlevel’s virtual nature comes from the uncertainty of the energy fluctuations (△E) over short time intervals. These △E fluctuations originate in the quantum vacuum (shown above) and appear in Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle of △E × △t is greater than or equal to h/4π, where △t is the uncertainty of the the time fluctuations and h is Planck’s constant. In other words, you can’t at the same time know all of the change in energy (△E) and all of the change in time (△t) just some combination of both (such as 60% of △E and 40% of △t). The h constant represents a photon that as a virtual particle mediates the charges (like charges that repel or opposite charges that attract). For example, shown below in a Feynman diagram, a virtual photon mediates the negative charges between two electrons that repel each other. With 0.0001 for the probability of the Virtual Midlevel in the Quantum Pie diagram (above) the uncertainty of △E is 0.9999. As already shown, authority’s uncertainty of 0.006 (0.0063 to four decimal places) represents h. Putting these uncertainties into Heisenberg’s formula, 0.9999 × △t is greater than or equal to 0.0063/4π, so that △t is greater than or equal to 0.0063/4π divided by 0.9999. That makes △t greater than or equal to 0.0005 for the uncertainty of the time fluctuations at the Virtual Midlevel.
Within the Lower-Level Quantum Zeno Range¹⁹ (below) the present state is preserved if measurements occur soon enough. In making a similar point, Zeno of Elea (430-490 BCE) maintained that an arrow didn’t really move, that motion was an illusion since, if you quickly glance at an arrow in flight, you won’t see it move. Another approach is to look at motion picture film. In looking at just one frame, you see a picture frozen in time. In organizations, this effect occurs with time spans of resource commitments under two days (48 hours).
Under two days, the attention switches from resource commitments to avoiding errors²³ which increases the chances of survival in the original state. This proves crucial in an emergency room where immediate action and a focus on the present dramatically improve a critical patient’s chances of survival. This focus on the immediate present is also critical with lives on the line as firefighters rescue people from buildings, with the police in firefights on the city streets, or with soldiers face to face with an enemy on the battlefield.
It’s no fluke!
Yes, this is the surprise quantum ending you’ve been so patiently waiting for. If you take Pythagoras’ triangle (the one above) and dig a little deeper, you won’t believe what’s waiting there. At 0 degrees and 0 minutes time stops, Luke, the time incentive is off the charts with 60 minutes divided by 0 minutes equal to infinity. It’s a huge carrot 🥕 and an unparalleled motivating factor. It dangles the promise of eternity along with godly graces (Mythic Insights). There’s simply not a more meaningful incentive. But without the intervention, as the psychiatrist Carl Jung warned, “The gods have become diseases. Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus and produces curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room.”²⁹