Family Life According to MetaPower

The MetaPower 5-tier design model is a powerful tool for effecting change in large part because it’s based on universal change principles. It can therefore be applied quite broadly.

So, let’s take it to the extreme. Suppose you have an 8-year-old who watches too much TV. You want to change that process.

Your strategy is to raise active, friendly, happy children with a broad range of interests. Your programs include emphasizing social interaction whenever possible, and so you have a limit of one hour of TV a day. Your child has started watching 1.5 hours because a new show has come on the air.

You have to decide if watching that show conflicts with your programmatic aims. If it does, you will need to consider ways of fixing the process. You could go for a technological tools fix (a timer on the TV, perhaps) or institute alternative processes, or just use discipline.

Whatever you do, you will negotiate alignment with the program and will negotiate the interfaces with other processes. For example, if your child agrees to watch an educational program instead, this may conflict with other processes such as “watching your favorite show” or “everyone getting to bed on time”.

And notice that there will likely be some normalization of the data dictionary. Is an educational show still “TV” as defined in your program? Does “an hour a day” imply a carry-over effect? Is a “day” only a weekday? A school day?

While we do not recommend the actual use of data flow diagrams and logic specifications, at least until the teen-age years, the MetaPower approach clearly has its applications...

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