The A to Z of OD: P is for Psychoanalysis

In inventing the practice of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud had some original ideas that have shaped our understanding of the unconscious mind. He posited that as we grow through childhood, we develop our Ego as a conscious mental structure that protects us from our unconscious impulses. These unconscious impulses are located in the Id (which seeks unbridled pleasure – what we would really like to do) and the Superego (which holds our morals – what we ‘know’ is the right thing to do). The Ego attempts to hold these impulses in check with whatever we experience in reality and therefore seeks pleasure based on a rational response to the real world.

This psychic process causes anxiety and we develop defence mechanisms – denying, distorting and manipulating reality – in order to cope with that anxiety.

Organisations have anxiety too

Organisations are human systems directed toward a primary purpose and have developed sophisticated whole systems directed towards the primary purpose. They have also developed sophisticated unconscious defence mechanisms.

These defence mechanisms are most readily seen when people in organisations struggle to take accountability for pursuing the organisation’s primary purpose and instead focus on protecting themselves within what they perceive as an increasingly dysfunctional organisation. For example:

  • They deny knowledge of issues and their own part in being able to solve them.
  • They blame and complain about other people at work. This is an example of Splitting. Splitting is either/or thinking. For example someone is either a hero or a villain. It is a defence mechanism that fails to integrate into one whole both positive and negative qualities in others.
  • They make excuses for not taking action. This is an example of Rationalisation, i.e. justification that unacceptable behaviour is logical.
  • They wait and hope someone else will fix the problem. This might be an example of Repression, which is when unconscious impulses are blocked from consciousness (“I’ve tried to make a difference before and I got burnt”), or Phantasy, the unconscious fantasy that something will come true in a certain way (i.e. without their input).

Only when people become aware of these defence mechanisms as examples of powerless behaviours, can they choose to overcome them and take accountability for pursuing the organisation’s primary purpose. As such, OD can be seen as restoring organisational health.

OD needs balance between systems thinking and psychoanalytic philosophy

Under J is for Joint Diagnosis, I explored systems thinking and the importance of considering the whole system when diagnosing organisational issues. OD is also grounded in group dynamics from psychoanalysis. Systems thinking and psychoanalytic perspectives must be deployed together if real change is to be sustained.

If system thinking dominates, OD tends to be more closely aligned to power in the organisation, however it runs the risk of becoming a corporatist tool. Think of the all-too-common approach to business process reengineering or restructuring without attending to the people/cultural side of change.

On the other hand, if psychoanalytic philosophy dominates, OD can become marginalised and ends up as a technique used by coaches, facilitators and leadership trainers. Potentially useful for individuals and perhaps teams, but not typically useful for the whole organisation.

Neither situation is optimal. OD consultants must balance the two – deploying their expertise in systems thinking and undertaking diagnosis that is grounded in psychoanalytic interpretation. If they can do this, then they can implement humanistic OD interventions that impact the whole system. For me at least, anything less than this is not OD.

OD Thought Leader: David Pendleton

A duck can fly, swim and walk, but does not excel at all three.

Pendleton is a psychologist and Professor in Leadership at Henley Business School. Along with Adrian Furnham, in 2012 he wrote Leadership: All You Need to Know.

In this extraordinary work, Pendleton and Furnham liken leaders to ducks. Leaders must attend to strategy, operations and relationships. It is rare any one leader excels at all three leadership dimensions. So why do leadership guides often assume there is such a thing as an all round leader who can excel at all aspects of leadership?

The book has lofty claims… “all you need to know”. Really? Well, actually yes. I do believe there is little value in looking elsewhere if you want to begin to understand leadership.

The book summarises all the best bits of leadership theory that preceded it, and then synthesises a remarkable leadership model aligned to personality traits that provides a blueprint for assessing leadership strengths that I believe will stand the test of time in the burgeoning digital age.

They also bust the myth of the rounded leader. Instead, they advocate building, developing and sustaining a rounded leadership team that has strengths in all three leadership domains.

Recommended reading: Pendleton, D and Furnham A (2012), Leadership: All you Need to Know, Palgrave, London

Next time in the A to Z of OD: Q is for Questions

The A to Z of OD: O is for Open Space

According to Guy Browning in his wonderful book Office Politics: How work Really Works, “Conferences are the business equivalent of going for a curry, in that everyone thinks having one is a great idea, but you always end up drinking too much, talking rubbish and feeling sick for days afterwards. The biggest fear in the business world is having to make a speech at a conference. This is because generally you have nothing of interest to say and no one in the audience has the slightest interest in anything you have to say anyway. For example, when you are the IT director, it’s your job to make sure the IT works. If it does work, they know that already and if it doesn’t, they don’t want to hear your pathetic excuses.”

Why are conferences so bad?

Joking aside, a lot of conferences are bad. They are expensive to arrange and take people away from work. The benefits are often questionable as you get either expert content presented inexpertly – think of that dreaded feeling when the first slide containing too many bullet points appears – or entertaining presentations with little valuable content.

Delegates become distracted by their phones and pay little attention to the presenters, dipping in and out and kidding themselves they will read the material later. The most value is generally from the networking opportunities and side conversations in the bar.

Great conferences require delegate involvement and interesting content.

Open Space is an OD technique

Open Space technology was created by Harrison Owen in 1985 as a way of engaging a large group of people in discussing content related to a theme or issue. The technique is used by industry groups, communities of interest or for finding solutions to issues. Such conferences are particularly useful when you want to engage a large cross-section of people impacted by an issue by drawing out different views on the topic. These happenings might be referred to as Whole Systems Events.

These days, organisers of Open Space events often call them Unconferences – a term introduced in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. Open Space and Unconferences are essentially the same thing. You may also come across them in different contexts labelled Accelerated Solutions Events, Design Sprints or Design Thinking Workshops.

What is Open space?

The crucial aspect of an Open Space event is that there is no agenda until the attendees turn up. This approach overcomes some of the issues with a traditional conference as it reduces costs, minimises centralised administration and often lowers or even removes fees for attending!

How does it work?

Self-organisation is key. You will need: a large conference area; several smaller meeting areas; a large blank agenda visible and accessible to everyone; and delegates with something to say!

The event starts with a facilitator inviting delegates to propose discussion topics. That person steps up and pitches their idea. The delegates demonstrate their approval, sometimes with a vote (show of hands or more often these days with a polling app such as Sli.do) or sometimes the facilitator will take on this role on the delegates’ behalf. If agreed, the presenter writes their topic on the agenda, scheduling it in one of the smaller meeting spaces and time slots available.

This continues until you have a full agenda with multiple sessions now scheduled to run concurrently… just like a regular conference, but with no fees paid to the speakers and a guarantee that the topics are of interest.

And then you can begin. Typically, delegates are invited to go wherever they feel they have something to learn or to contribute to a discussion. And they are invited to use the “Law of Two Feet”. This means they are free to wander in and out of sessions at will – should they feel they are neither learning nor contributing, then they obey the law and go somewhere else where they will.

At the end of each session, reflections, conclusions and actions are captured and shared back with all the delegates.

Good conference organisation often means doing less so your delegates do more. The result is a creative, collaborative conference with engaged and empowered delegates. This is no jolly out of the office to get your ticket punched!

And as Guy Browning reminds us, “[Well-organised meetings] are meetings for which you have to prepare, in which you have to work and after which you have to take action. Fortunately, these meetings are as rare as a sense of gay abandon in the finance department.”

OD Thought Leader: Eddie Obeng (b. 1959)

Eddie Obeng is a Professor at Henley Business School and the founder of his own virtual business school, Pentacle.

Obeng believes that somebody changed the rules of the world. At midnight about 20 years ago. He believes the real 21st Century (the ‘New World’) operates to a whole new set of rules and that we are responding to a fantasy version of the world that we learnt in the 20th Century (the ‘Old World’).

The argument goes something like this: the pace of change is ever-increasing. The amount of information available to us has increased exponentially. It is, for example, estimated that 50% of the information on the Internet was created in the last two years. By being connected to the Internet, we are effectively at the centre of a global corporation that we no longer understand.

In comparison to this explosive pace of change, the pace of learning is effectively flat. Consider the usefulness of a business plan covering the next five years against that context. It is worthless the instant it is approved, if not before.

The moment the pace of change exceeded the pace of learning is the moment we lost our grip on the reality of the New World. This happened at midnight about 20 years ago. And nobody noticed.

To combat this, Obeng believes we must exponentially accelerate our learning. Many organisations now say to their managers, “Innovate, be creative!” Yet they mean, “Do something quirky and fail and you’re fired.” He believes we must be allowed to fail faster – he calls it Smart Failure­ – and be rewarded for it.

Sure, if you know what to do and how to do it then you can’t afford to fail, and you should be fired! It’s like painting by numbers – not much opportunity for failure unless you’re incompetent.

However, change these days is about achieving things when you know neither what you’re doing nor how you’re going to do it. How could you know these things when you do not understand the New World? He calls this ‘foggy change’. It requires innovation, collaboration and Design Thinking. It requires organisations protect people by encouraging smart failure.

Or you could continue to respond as if it is still the 20th Century. Continue painting by numbers. It will keep you occupied for a while longer, but it will not create anything new or innovative.

Recommended reading: Obeng, Eddie (1995): All Change!: The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook, London, Pitman/Financial Times

Next time in the A to Z o OD: P is for Psychoanalysis