Your Company on the Couch
By Bernard Chanliau, Wednesday 03 March, 2010
Gathering new data and perspectives for 21st century organisation efficiency. An introduction to Organisation Analysis and Systems Coaching by Lorna McDowell, Organisation Analyst.Recent events at Toyota and allegation of bullying at 10 Downing Street are just more of the latest evidence that today's challenges cannot be solved by yesterdays' solutions. The focus on attention to human factors puts integrity of organization culture under the microscope more than ever. If you want to survive the next decade with your reputation intact, now is the time to look deeper under the surface at what is happening inside your organisation. Don't stick your head under the sand!
How does one begin to work "under the surface" for unconscious cultural issues and human factors?
Organisation psychodynamic analysis - as distinct from personal psychoanalysis - helps an organization unlock cultural dilemmas that are stagnating potential and holding people back. It provides a new kind of evidence-based data for risk analysis of the human kind through action research techniques inside and around the organisation. An organisation analyst will examine the "whole system of inter-connected systems" of an organization - from departmental silos through to customers, supply partners and other stakeholder groups, to build a picture of what is happening across the organisation and where misalignments maybe occurring. The work can be organization-wide, through focus groups or 1-1 with individual executives and teams - the common factor is systems thinking.
Key to the work is an understanding of the gap between the conscious aspired-to idea of a company's purpose and the actual unconscious reality of a company's culture in its setting. This work goes beyond competency development frameworks, psychometric testing, talent management, job descriptions, LEAN business process consulting and other transactional processes that attempt to manage behaviour, into an analysis of blind spots of innate human behaviour and the impact of humans working in groups in a constantly changing context.
What are the common errors that companies have traditionally made that have led to organization risk?
The first error is that people tend to view organisations as fixed entities with core products and services and boundary walls, rather than constantly moving, shape shifting and interconnected entities within a marketplace and a wider community, national and global context. Everything is inter-dependent. The second error stems from a widespread habit of over-attention to the physical manifestations and tasks of the company, when the majority of organisation life actually begins and happens first inside people's hearts and minds. The interior perspective is largely ignored or scratched at the surface, because it takes people out of comfort zone or seems too complex, thus leaving huge scope for risk. Add this to the macho culture of an organisations or industry tribe and very quickly you have a pack of unguarded tigers at large. We only have to look to the financial services industry for evidence.The job of an organisation analyst is to bring to the surface what is happening in the interior. All too often we find that major misalignments are innocently occurring, yet the deckchairs are still apparently straight on the top of the sinking ship. It usually takes an objective third party with a highly trained and experienced eye to see it. Once identified, the analyst then uses systems coaching techniques to work through the required realignments in a way that involves people in seeing and developing solutions together - so that the solution comes from the interior, not the exterior.
The work of an organisational analyst is a specialist discipline, for which considerable professional training is required. Consultations are based on the teachings of Wilfred Bion, a British psychoanalyst who pioneered the study of group behaviour, and other psychologists including W. Gordon Lawrence, A K Rice and newer contributors such as Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge and Ken Wilber.
Xenergie is holding a FREE one hour webinar on Unlocking Cultural Gridlock and face to face 1-day workshops in Dublin, Bristol and London.
Please contact lorna.mcdowell@xenergie.com tel +44 (0)844 7743856/+353 (0)87 919 06 22 for more information or visit our workshop section to sign up on Thursday April 22nd (Unlock Cultural Gridlock: Organisation Analysis Workshop).
