The Seven Percent Solution Book
Regenia Junke
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. is a 1974 novel by American writer Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was made into a film of the same name in 1976.[2]
An introduction states that two canonical Holmes adventures were fabrications. These are "The Final Problem", in which Holmes apparently died along with Prof. James Moriarty, and "The Empty House", wherein Holmes reappeared after a three-year absence and revealed that he had not been killed after all. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution's Watson explains that they were published to conceal the truth concerning Holmes' "Great Hiatus".
The novel begins in 1891, when Holmes first informs Watson of his belief that Professor James Moriarty is a "Napoleon of Crime". The novel presents this view as nothing more than the fevered imagining of Holmes' cocaine-sodden mind and further asserts that Moriarty was the childhood mathematics tutor of Sherlock and his brother Mycroft. Watson meets Moriarty, who denies that he is a criminal and reluctantly threatens to pursue legal action unless the latter's accusations cease. Moriarty also refers to a "great tragedy" in Holmes' childhood, but refuses to explain further when pressed by Watson.
The heart of the novel consists of an account of Holmes' recovery from his addiction. Knowing that Sherlock would never willingly see a doctor about his addiction and mental problems, Watson and Holmes' brother Mycroft induce Holmes to travel to Vienna, where Watson introduces him to Dr. Freud. Using a treatment consisting largely of hypnosis, Freud helps Holmes shake off his addiction and his delusions about Moriarty, but neither he nor Watson can revive Holmes' dejected spirit.
What finally does the job is a whiff of mystery: one of the doctor's patients is kidnapped and Holmes' curiosity is sufficiently aroused. The case takes the three men on a breakneck train ride across Austria in pursuit of a foe who is about to launch a war involving all of Europe. Holmes remarks during the denouement that they have succeeded only in postponing such a conflict, not preventing it; Holmes would later become involved in a "European War" in 1914.
One final hypnosis session reveals a key traumatic event in Holmes' childhood: his father murdered his mother (and her lover) for adultery and committed suicide afterwards. Moriarty was the one who told Holmes of the drama, and as messenger of the bad news is now seen as being responsible for their deaths by Holmes. From that point on, his onetime tutor became a dark and malignant figure in Holmes' subconscious. Freud and Watson conclude that Holmes, consciously unable to face the emotional ramifications of this event, has pushed them deep into his unconscious while finding outlets in fighting evil, pursuing justice, and many of his famous eccentricities, including his cocaine habit. However, they decide not to discuss these subjects with Holmes, believing that he would not accept them, and that it would needlessly complicate his recovery.
Watson returns to London, but Holmes decides to travel alone for a while, advising Watson to claim that he had been killed, and thus the famed "Great Hiatus" is more or less preserved. It is during these travels that the events of Meyer's sequel The Canary Trainer occur.
During the 1973 scriptwriters strike, Nicholas Meyer needed a project to occupy his time.[5] Meyer developed an interest in Sherlock Holmes as a teenager and off-and-on over the years had given thought to authoring a story where Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud, having learned of the founder of psychoanalysis from his psychiatrist father.[5] The strike was the impetus to settle into developing the various ideas he had over the years into a book.[5]
Meyer wrote the book in longhand and then typed it up feeling that this better put him in the mindset of "editing" Watson's words.[5] He added deliberate continuity errors and mistakes to better provide the illusion of being an extension of the original works.[6]
Holmes's addiction to cocaine is developed out of the opening scene of Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four. In that scene, Holmes describes the cocaine with which he is injecting himself as "a seven-per-cent solution."[7]
In his Introduction, Meyer's Watson declares that "The Lion's Mane", "The Mazarin Stone", "The Creeping Man" and "The Three Gables" (all Arthur Conan Doyle-written adventures from 1927's The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes) are forged "drivel". "The Creeping Man" has been accused of resembling a science-fiction tale more than a Holmes adventure,[8] "The Mazarin Stone" is often viewed as an awkward adaptation of a theatrical script by Doyle[9] and some have objected to a racist characterization in "The Three Gables".[10] "The Lion's Mane", while perhaps less controversial than the other tales, is notable for being one of the canon's two stories narrated by Holmes. Meyer's Watson also states that other forgeries exist, though whether canonical works are concerned is not specified.
The story was adapted for the screen in 1976 in a Universal Studios production, directed by Herbert Ross, scripted by Meyer and designed by James Bond veteran Ken Adam. The all-star cast featured Nicol Williamson as Holmes, Robert Duvall as Watson, Alan Arkin as Dr. Sigmund Freud, with Laurence Olivier as Moriarty, Charles Gray as Mycroft Holmes (the role he reprised in the Jeremy Brett TV series), Samantha Eggar as Mary Watson, Vanessa Redgrave as Lola Devereaux, Joel Grey as Lowenstein, and Jeremy Kemp as Baron von Leinsdorf and Williamson's then wife Jill Townsend playing his character's mother (Mrs. Holmes).[11] The film was made at Pinewood Studios with location shooting in the UK and Austria (including the famous Austrian National Library); the tennis match/duel between Freud and von Leinsdorf was filmed on one of the historic real tennis courts at the Queen's Club in West Kensington, London.[12] The chase on the trains was shot with set-dressed British steam locomotives and freight cars dressed up as coaches.
The story was dramatised for radio by Denny Martin Flinn. The adaptation aired on BBC Radio 4 on 9 January 1993. It was directed by Jane Morga, with Simon Callow as Sherlock Holmes, Ian Hogg as Dr Watson, Karl Johnson as Sigmund Freud, David King as Professor Moriarty, Philip Voss as Mycroft Holmes, Matthew Morgan as Baron von Leinsdorf, Melinda Walker as Nancy Osborn Slater, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Baroness von Leinsdorf, and Wolf Kahler as Hugo von Hoffmansthal.[14] The radio adaptation was more faithful to the novel than the film adaptation.[15]
As many organizations implement new hybrid work models, improve their sustainability, try to enter new markets or work to realign their cost structures, executives wrestle with implementing change successfully.
In his book, Leading Change, Kotter writes that a guiding coalition team should have four characteristics. But he does not present research on how big the guiding coalition should be. Below are his four characteristics:
I have found in my implementation of change in large organizations that successful guiding coalitions grow with enthusiastic supporters as the change is launched, often with sub-teams in various departments.
McKinsey and Company looked at data from 60 organizations that are at least two years into their transformations, and discovered that transformations with at least seven percent of employees owning part of the transformation are twice as likely to succeed as those with less than seven percent initiative ownership. They defined success as having total returns to shareholders (TRS) in excess of their representative sector and geographic stock index.
The 2020s will see constant crisis and change. Executives and middle managers will need to be competent at leading change and involving employees in the change that affects them. When leaders find ways to meaningfully involve seven percent or more of their employees in a transformation, positive change will start to escalate.
Victor Assad is the CEO of Victor Assad Strategic Human Resources Consulting, managing partner of InnovationOne, and Sales Advisor to MeBeBot. He works with companies to transform HR and recruiting, implement remote work, and develop extraordinary leaders, teams, and innovation cultures. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Hack Recruiting: the Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process, and Digitization. Subscribe to his weekly blogs at www.VictorHRConsultant.com.
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