Right out of college with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, I was off to a good start in my career with a McJob, where I learned valuable skills such as knowing the entire menu in Spanish. That job didn’t last too long for me, but one thing that impressed me immensely is how simple they had made following their procedures. Everything you did had clear instructions with the materials ready-made so that it was really hard to screw things up. For example, when mopping the floors, the buckets, the soap, and the mop were set up beautifully so that it was easy to drain the water, get clean water, put in just the right amount of soap, etc. If you mopped floors at other jobs as I had, you could easily see how much better the system at McDonald’s was compared to other companies. I didn’t flip burgers; instead, there was a giant George Forman-grill-type device. Throw the burgers on the grill and press down with the lid; the lid would rise automatically and then beep when completed. No flipping required. Smart people often try to copy McDonald’s procedures. I’ve often said that if you see someone doing something effective, it is OK to steal it—it’s one of the best ways to improve. You don’t have to invent everything yourself.
This is relevant to behavior analysis because making procedures as simple as possible for parents, teachers, and others is very important if we want to get things implemented in the real world. If the procedures are too complicated, people without extensive training are likely to implement them incorrectly, and they won’t get good results. Also, it is possible that it might make behavior or learning problems worse. It would be amazing if behavior analysis could teach therapists and parents to follow procedures as consistently as McDonald’s.
The problem is that I don’t work at McDonald’s any longer and neither do you. There is a famous quote possibly attributed to Albert Einstein–“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It is wonderful to try to make things simple so non-experts can implement the procedures. We should do that whenever possible. But don’t dumb them down so much that they are minimally effective.
Unfortunately, based on our current state of knowledge, some of our procedures need to be implemented by experts. That might seem obvious, but I often see people implementing procedures poorly—yet they are doing it exactly the way they were trained. This happens when people attempt to take the systems lessons of McDonald’s too far. Some things are just not going to work on a consultant model–you need to get in there and do it yourself.
When working with children with autism, some procedures are going to be too complicated to implement by just anyone. We don’t yet know how to simplify them, so we need people who have extensive training. It is important that we recognize this and be the person on the floor, not the one back in the office drinking coffee.