I think people respond to criticism differently across cultures. His initial approach might not have been completely American (which makes for good drama).

My personal experience (in Africa, Europe and now America) is that people here in the States respond more to positive reinforcement – not so everywhere.

I think he gets a pass because he actually offers solutions.

Hopefully the culture (or personality) does not get in the way of his very important message.

Great post by the way, is a very incisive criticism. Thank you for sharing.

Yes, Scott, you’re right — who knows how the show producers have framed or manipulated the situation or tape. But given what I’ve seen on the show, it all seems awfully familiar to what I’ve experienced, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and take what I see at face value (at least for the purposes of this post).

It’s interesting that you bring up incentives and rewards. I’m most accustomed to the incentive of a job well done; I have never been able to offer any tangible reward to promote any of the changes I’ve advocated. I dislike monetary incentives because they’re most often used in the early promotion of a change — so later adopters miss out, which can create unneeded barriers between adopters. Also, in Jamie’s case, he’s already seeking funding for more training, so finding money for incentives might be even more difficult. But, just in bringing it up, you help raise awareness of how rewards are so often used to manipulate behavior, which is something we should all be aware of (especially when we’re the ones being manipulated).

Very good observations on change, and finding positive or negative ways to frame it. I do wonder with any reality TV show how much of how things are framed is the choice of the producers who are interesting in creating drama – and negative framing is easier to create and easier to sell (in teasters for the show). Plus it’s impossible to know how much of what’s shown is representative of everything that actually happened.

The thing I kept thinking about was incentives. Alive has no clear incentive for wanting change. Change is more work and frustration for her, even if it’s good for the kids. However if she gets $1 for every kid that eats better that day, or a $5k bonus if the obesity rate in her school, then Jamie’s goals and hers become aligned. Same goes for that bureaucrat who insists there are 1.5 units of bread in every meal. Her job is to enforce the rules, not to improve them. Unless she’s rewarded for making the rules better, or god forbid, making kids healthy, she’s unlikely to be an ally either.

All in all, I thought the show, and Jamie, was very positive and real compared to many reality TV shows. It’s still TV, but compared to say Kitchen Nightmare where Gordon Ramsey runs around yelling at people for an hour, it was, as you mention, something quite positive.

Thanks for the post.