A few examples of people causing damage by acting unprofessionally and out of character have been given in the past; the time has now come to go into this phenomenon in a little more detail.
The multi-level approach to finding explanations article mentions some of the influences that might cause people who are normally professional and efficient to behave uncharacteristically and make serious mistakes; this article revisits the issue, expands on these influences and includes some supporting material from previous articles.
The cases of interest here are those that occur at the third level down, the dimension where unseen influences such as energy vampires, people with witch-like personalities, psychic crime and psychological black magic operate.
There are questions to ask and possibilities to eliminate at each level before descending to the one below; there are also some points to be made before starting the exercise.
It is important to understand that examples of people doing something wrong are worth investigating only where two elements appear together i.e. when someone acts both unprofessionally and out of character. After all, some people will act unprofessionally because this is their usual mode of operation; not only that, a few of these incompetents might act out of character by doing a good, professional job for once! Neither of these groups is relevant here.
People are not machines; they sometimes have off days. Occasional errors will be made and should be allowed for, but an investigation into the cause is called for when so much damage has been done that the mistake cannot be overlooked, excused or explained away.
This is where the multi-level approach comes in.
On this, the top, level, it is best to work systematically through a list of the most obvious and likely explanations for a damaging, out of character action. The possibilities fall into two groups: one is of factors in the life of the person who made the mistake and the other of common and typical problems with the job.
