Most of the time, seriously bad feelings and destructive competitions will be prevented or minimized because most direct issue oriented interaction will involve people in the same working units who largely agree about the solutions they are working with.

Positive problem solving of the kind discussed above might meet less resistance and get a better reception than it normally does. Hopefully, the cooperative attitudes developed will lead to more understanding and trust than is present in most interactive situations. Good interactions will also help to facilitate more successful collaboration, in the process of combining similar ideas into fewer, more comprehensive proposals than would otherwise exist.

The fact that participants in these projects will be familiar with each other’s ideas before they engage in direct interaction will also contribute to their ability to more easily understand and cooperate with each other.

We're counting on all these factors to encourage program participants to focus on helping each other develop ideas into workable proposals for solutions to the pressing problems we all share.