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The Unconventional Success of W.L. Gore & Associates

January 14, 2024
Article, Culture change
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The Unconventional Success of W.L. Gore & Associates

Unconventional FTW

W.L. Gore & Associates, manufacturers of Gore-Tex fabrics and other innovative products, is a remarkably successful company that takes an unconventional approach to business. Founded in 1958 by Bill and Vieve Gore in Newark, Delaware, Gore has grown into a multinational corporation with over £2.5 billion in annual sales. However, what makes Gore stand out is its unique organisational structure and culture.

#NoManagement For Reals

Gore does not have traditional corporate hierarchies or chains of command. There are no assigned job titles or positions like president, manager, or supervisor. Instead, associates (as employees are called) become “sponsors” of new ideas and projects that align with Gore’s overall values. Interested associates join these product teams and small task groups. Leaders emerge based on knowledge and skill, not title or seniority. Every associate has the freedom to share ideas and participate in decision making. Compensation and advancement are based on teamwork and personal contribution.

Empowerment

This lack of formal structure, known as a “lattice organisation,” promotes creativity, flexibility, and collaboration at Gore. Without bosses hovering over them, associates feel empowered to develop new products that could become Gore’s next big innovations. The lattice fosters talent growth from within, as associates get chances to demonstrate leadership. With small task teams, issues can be solved quickly. Direct communication between all levels leads to better ideas and decisions.

Remarkably, this organisational model works very well for a £2.5 billion company. Gore has a talent retention rate of over 97 per cent and regularly ranks among Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. Their products are very successful—Gore-Tex, for example, is one of the best-known waterproof fabric brands globally.

While unconventional, Gore’s lattice structure and egalitarian culture clearly cultivate high employee engagement, innovation, quality, and bottom-line results. The successes of this unique organisation serve as an inspiration that could change how more companies think about “standard” management practices. Perhaps some of Gore’s approaches are worth adopting elsewhere, and with outstanding results.

Everyone is an Artist in Their Own Medium

January 14, 2024
Article, Empathy
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Everyone is an Artist in Their Own Medium

What qualifies someone as an artist? The typical markers involve mastery of a craft like painting, dance, or sculpture that allows one to generate creative works others recognise as artistic. Yet the legendary psychologist Carl Rogers believed every person has the capacity for creative expression in some medium, no matter how seemingly mundane.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Rogers pioneered an approach centred on Unconditional Positive Regard – valuing all people for who they are, not what they achieve. He knew that to become their optimal selves, people need environments where they feel safe being authentic, not forced to present inauthentic facades. When given complete freedom to channel their distinctive experiences into something personally meaningful, Rogers believed everyone can make art of their lives.

Creative Channels

Rogers was right. Given his compassionate lens, we needn’t be Da Vinci or Mozart to have valid artistic impulses worthy of nurturing. Your medium of choice may not hang in the Tate or top music charts. But unconditionally regarding all personal self-expression as valid gives people permission to turn core passions, however unorthodox, into creative channels that feed the soul.

For example, an amateur chef turns the alchemy of food preparation into his artistry. A devoted parent marshals all her life experience into how she raises her children. An avid football fan pours creative energy into managing his fantasy team. Or a devoted friend channels insight from supporting others into becoming an impactful mentor.

Self-Actualised

When we direct our distinctive personalities and aptitudes into anything that lets us feel self-actualised, we make art of that domain however humble it may be. The key is choosing to take unconditional positive regard to mean that when we pursue our true passions with authenticity, we engage the same creative capacity that enables anyone to make art of their lives, regardless of external judgments or standards.

So today, reflect on what niche aligns with your authentic selfhood and gifts. How could you bring more artistry there by channelling your irreproducible experiences into something you find personally meaningful? For inhabiting fully who we are, not conformity, makes us artists of the domains that matter most to us. That is the craft every human longs to master at heart.

Further Reading

Robinson, K. (2009). The element: How finding your passion changes everything. New York, NY: Penguin.

Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2013). Finding your element: How to discover your talents and passions and transform your life. New York, NY: Penguin.

Ennui

January 13, 2024
Article, Culture change, Software development
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Ennui

Definition

Ennui is a feeling of boredom, dissatisfaction, and weariness stemming from a lack of excitement or meaningful activity. It’s a listless, apathetic state that can sap motivation and passion.

Timeline

Twenty, fifteen, even ten years ago there was tremendous enthusiasm amongst developers for fixing the world’s approach to software development. Conferences abounded. There was a palpable buzz in the air. New methodologies like Agile promised to revolutionise how software was built, moving away from rigid, documentation-heavy and micromanaged waterfall development. Open source software held the promise of democratising coding and enabling worldwide collaboration. There was electic excitement to leverage technology to improve lives and transform industries.

A Realisation

But nowadays, that enthusiasm has largely dissipated, replaced with ennui. The promises of improved productivity and quality have failed to materialise. Open source has become corporatised and lost its indie spirit. The realisation has set in that while software can improve things, technology alone can’t resolve systemic societal and commercial issues. And factors like offshoring, automation and “now, now, now!” cultures have decreased satisfaction levels across the industry.

Disillusion

This ennui manifests in high employee turnover, burnout from overwork, and developers questioning if they want to remain in the field. The passion that initially attracted many to software – the idea you could change the world through code – has been replaced with disillusionment. New approaches now feel gimmicky rather than groundbreaking. Technologies feel incremental rather than innovative. Opportunities feel constricted by business realities rather than inspirational. And quiet quiiting is everywhere.

Morale

The Covid pandemic has only heightened this ennui. Subsequent massive layoffs have left many talented developers unemployed or fearful for their jobs, hardly the climate to inspire passion. And trying to create and collaborate solely over video chats lacks the human connection and excitement that once flourished in dynamic office environments. People’s basic safety and stability needs have been imperilled, making it difficult to reach higher goals of self-actualisation and purpose.

Deeper Cultural Issues

It’s an open question whether the current ennui plaguing developers is just a phase or indicative of deeper cultural issues in tech needing to change (my money’s on the presence of deeper cultural issues). But rediscovering the excitement, freedom and purpose that once attracted people to software may be one way to counter the creeping cynicism and revitalise the industry. Tapping into that earlier enthusiasm is critical for retaining talent and enabling developers to create their best work. The alternative is the passionless status quo – something that benefits no one.

The Assumptions Underpinning Business Beliefs

January 12, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Culture change, Improvement, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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The Assumptions Underpinning Business Beliefs

“Have you ever asked yourself, what are the deepest principles upon which my management beliefs are based? Probably not. Few executives, in my experience, have given much thought to the foundational principles that underlie their views on how to organise and manage. In that sense, they are as unaware of their managerial DNA as they are of their biological DNA.”

~ Prof Gary Hamel

Professor Gary Hamel’s insight points to a common blind spot – the assumptions upon which we build our businesses rarely get examined. We take our beliefs for granted rather than questioning where they came from or evaluating their current relevance. Over time, unquestioned principles shape our strategic decisions, workplace culture and collective potential – and thus effectiveness – without our awareness.

Organisational psychotherapy offers one route to excavating the hidden shared assumptions that become ingrained in a company’s DNA. Through techniques like group reflection and dialogue sessions, teams can gradually bring unspoken belief systems to the surface. Often these are “stories we live by” – the narrative frames determining priorities, norms, success measures and more. Shining light allows us to reconsider if these beliefs still serve the organisation or if they hinder.

Just as individual leaders have inner beliefs steering their choices, so too do groups and organisations. The shared assumptions get passed down over years through habits, policies, legends and corporate mantras. They solidify into the “way things are done around here” until nobody bothers asking why anymore (if they ever did). And yet today’s business realities may require questioning everything we take for granted about how to operate, adapt and succeed.

I invite leaders to view organisational psychotherapy as an opportunity to unearth the stories we live by. Let’s open up today’s prevailing assumptions to inspection in the cold light of day. Do they still nourish the collective potential or constrain it? This work of examining our beliefs benefits from neutral, experienced facilitation rather than internal politics. Thereby we can evolve the organisational DNA to better thrive in tomorrow’s complex business ecosystems.

The principles we build our organisations upon end up building our organisational lives. What beliefs inform your company’s inner DNA right now? And are you willing to question their ongoing relevance with courage?

Positive Deviant Organisations

January 11, 2024
Article, Quintessence
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Positive Deviant Organisations

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, organisations can benefit from continuously innovating and adapting to stay competitive. Gary Hamel, a renowned management thinker, believes that to discover radically better ways of operating, organisations might choose to look beyond tghe same-same of conventional best practices and examine “positive deviants” – the outliers who succeed against the odds.

As Hamel states, “How do you discover radically better ways of leading, organizing and managing? The short answer: You look far beyond the boundaries of today’s “best practice.” You look someplace weird, someplace unexpected. To glimpse the future of organisations, search out the “positive deviants,” organizations and social systems that defy the norms of conventional practice.”

Positive deviant organisations thrive by bucking industry trends and norms. And by founding their principles and practices in radically different collectiove assumptions and beliefs They develop unique practices, processes and cultures that allow them to achieve exceptional results. Studying how these maverick organisations operate can provide valuable insights for leaders looking to foster innovation.

A great dissection of positive deviant organisations is detailed in my book “Quintessence: An Acme for Highly Effective Organisations“. The book examines innovative companies like MorningStar, which has developed a radically transparent and idea-meritocratic culture. MorningStar’s unique principles and practices have allowed it to consistently outperform the market.

As “Quintessence” demonstrates, positive deviant organisations like MorningStar offer a window into the future of management. By analysing how these outliers succeed, organisations can get inspiration for how to better lead, organise and manage their own teams and organisations. The lessons from positive deviants can spark new ideas and changes in foundational assumptions and beliefs, tailored to an organisation’s specific context and goals.

In today’s accelerated business landscape, the best practices of the past will no longer be sufficient. To build great organisations of the future, leaders might choose to seek wisdom from the positive deviants – the pioneers charting new paths beyond the status quo. Studying these radical outliers can unlock innovative strategies for how to structure, manage and lead in radically better ways.

Further Reading

Pascale, R. T., Sternin, J., & Sternin, M. (2010). The power of positive deviance: How unlikely innovators solve the world’s toughest problems. Harvard Business Press.

Doing Things Differently

January 11, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Quintessence
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Doing Things Differently

We’ve all heard the saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always had.” Yet, breaking out of our habits and routines can be challenging. The 16th-century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli recognised this tendency, writing in his famous work The Prince:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

Machiavelli’s point was that implementing major change inevitably faces resistance, precisely because people are so accustomed to the status quo. But he also acknowledged that introducing “a new order of things” can bring great rewards if done skilfully.

So why do we resist change even when we’re unhappy with how things are? A lot of it comes down to cognitive biases. Losses loom larger than gains in our minds due to Loss Aversion. The Endowment Effect also attaches us more to what we already have. And the Backfire Effect makes us double down on our existing assumptions and beliefs when they’re challenged. Overcoming these subconscious biases takes self-awareness and effort.

When trying to effect change, it can be useful to start small. Big overnight changes, even if needed, often fail because they are too disruptive. You’re more likely to make progress through incremental changes that build positive momentum over time.

It also helps to focus on progress rather than perfection. The goal isn’t necessarily finding the ultimate solution immediately but rather taking steps in the right direction. Pursuing iterative improvements beats getting stuck waiting for the perfect plan. In Quintessence I write in more detail about this.

Additional keys to making change work include questioning (surfacing and reflecting upon) assumptions, inviting outside perspective, running experiments, learning from failures, and communicating transparently. With the quintessential mindset and approach, doing things differently can open up new vistas of possibility. Though the path may not be easy, as Machiavelli noted, the rewards make it worthwhile.

Rather than rigidly adhere to the status quo, have the courage to surface assumptions, reflect on them, adapt and grow. As the saying goes: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always have what you’ve always had. But if you do what you’ve never done, you’ll have what you’ve never had.”

Summarised: The Profound Connection Between the Technology Business and Organisational Psychotherapy

January 9, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Summary
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Summarised: The Profound Connection Between the Technology Business and Organisational Psychotherapy

This is a brief summary of the post “The Profound Connection Between the Technology Business and Organisational Psychotherapy“. Do let me know if seeing more summaries of my posts would be helpful to you. And if so, which ones?

Summary

The post argues that a focus on human needs and psychotherapy is critical for optimising workplaces, more so than advanced technologies.

New technology cannot resolve underlying human challenges like poor leadership, bias, and mental health struggles. In fact, technology without care for people can worsen these issues.

Organisations benefit from frameworks like organisational psychotherapy to examine and improve human social patterns, diversity, communication norms and other people-centered factors.

Beneficial application of technology supports, rather than diminishes, human potential. Companies migh choose to ensure a psychologically healthy culture and focus on uplifting the human spirit before technological ambitions.

Ultimately, the post calls for centering the human element over technology innovations. It contends that understanding people unlocks true organisational excellence, not technology by itself.

The Profound Connection Between the Technology Business and Organisational Psychotherapy

January 9, 2024
Article, Culture change, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence
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The Profound Connection Between the Technology Business and Organisational Psychotherapy

The breakneck growth of the technology industry has centered on building ever-faster, smarter, and more efficient tools and systems. Yet, as explored in depth in books like Quintessence and Memeology, there is a growing recognition that advanced technology alone cannot solve all human challenges, especially within the workplace. The human element remains critical. It is at the intersection of technology and organisational psychotherapy where profound opportunities arise.

What is Organisational Psychotherapy?

Organisational psychotherapy is an emerging field examining shared assumptions and beliefs within group settings, especially workplaces. As explained in my book “Quintessence“, it identifies issues like toxic team dynamics, ineffective leadership structures, and overall dysfunctional organisational cultures that prevent human potential from flourishing. The overarching goal is to enable organisations to surface and reflect on their dysfunctional patterns.

Some key issues that organisational psychotherapy addresses include:

  • Unspoken hierarchies stifling diversity of thought
  • Exclusion and gatekeeping harming innovation
  • Lack of psychological safety preventing collaboration
  • Poor leadership disempowering teams
  • Communication breakdowns sowing distrust
  • Excessive bureaucracy killing agility
  • Toxic or abusive management traumatizing employees
  • Perverse incentives rewarding unethical behavior
  • Workplace discrimination and bias
  • Employee burnout and poor mental health

While individual therapy focuses on helping individuals, organisational psychotherapy zooms out to understand group and system dynamics in the workplace. It provides a framework for understanding precisely why certain organisations struggle to thrive, even when they have access to the most advanced technology.

The Role of Technology in Enabling Dysfunction

Today’s most ambitious technology companies aim to build platforms and algorithms that enhance productivity, spur innovation, and seamlessly connect teams. However, technology also has a shadow side, especially when designed and deployed without care.

As dissected in Memeology, tools meant to improve efficiency can lead to e.g. rigid bureaucracy. Use of messaging apps can foster miscommunication and conflict. Social media algorithms can enable the rapid spread of misinformation and extremism amongst groups. AI-driven management systems can demoralise human workers and treat them as expendable cogs in a machine.

In essence, technology lacks self-awareness about potential downsides. When combined with unhealthy group dynamics in an organisation, it can worsen performance instead of improving it. There are countless examples of advanced technology being implemented in counterproductive ways:

  • Remote work tools leading to always-on expectations and burnout
  • Enterprise messaging apps used to harass marginalised employees
  • Productivity tracking tools sowing distrust between managers and teams
  • AI-driven hiring algorithms entrenching bias and discrimination
  • Social media misused to attack and silence diverse voices
  • Surveillance technology undermining privacy and autonomy

Without an understanding of organisational dynamics, technology can unintentionally become a burden rather than a boon to human potential and cooperation. This underscores the need for a complementary lens like organisational psychotherapy.

Integrating Organisational Psychotherapy into Tech Culture

Several forward-thinking technology companies are now working to integrate organisational psychotherapy into their products, teams, and company cultures. They recognise that the best teams, and therefor products, are those that understand innate human strengths and weaknesses and seek to bring out the best in people.

For example, collaboration platform designers are exploring how interface details affect unspoken hierarchies, exclusion, and groupthink within online teams. Instead of optimising purely for efficiency, the goal is to encourage diverse voices, psychological safety, and healthy group norms. (See also: Conway’s Law).

Leading companies are also examining their own cultures through an organisational psychotherapy lens as detailed in Quintessence. This includes focusing on diversity and inclusion initiatives, workplace mental health policies, healthy communication norms, and compassionate leadership principles. It also means decentralising authority, allowing time for reflection, and seeing value in failure as opportunities for growth. The goal is to create thriving environments, not mere productivity factories.

Bridging the Gap Between the Technical and the Human

Ultimately, organisational psychotherapy and technology work best when united, bridging the gap between the technical and the intimately human. Just as medicine combines an understanding of physiology with ethics and the human spirit, technology moves in a positive direction when informed and supported by psychotherapy.

The engineers and programmers building the latest algorithms, platforms, and machine learning systems would benefit immensely from integrating human-centered design principles (for example: Emotioneering). And organisational psychotherapists helping companies create healthier dynamics and leadership structures might choose to embrace sophisticated tools to augment their impact.

When technology and organisational psychotherapy come together in this way, they have the potential to profoundly empower teams, heal dysfunctional organisations, transform organisational cultures for the better, and unlock new levels of human potential, especially within the CKW workplace. The future belongs to solutions that successfully bridge the technical and the humane. Both Quintessence and Memeology point toward this brighter destination. But we still have much work to do as an industry to fully integrate technological advances with psychological wellbeing and bring out the best in each other.

Knowledge Management Flies in the Face of Voltaire’s Wisdom

January 9, 2024
Article, Capability development, Quintessence
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Knowledge Management Flies in the Face of Voltaire’s Wisdom

“Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?”

This statement by Voltaire succinctly captures the folly of knowledge management (KM) efforts in modern corporations.

KM aims to codify knowledge and extract it from individuals into reusable forms like knowledge bases and best practices. But as Voltaire knew, true wisdom does not come from borrowing and reapplying others’ knowledge. Real learning requires personal experience, subjective insight and action.

Decontextualised knowledge lacks the nuance and application needed to become practical wisdom. Voltaire recognised that surface-level learning from third-party experiences is next to useless. Truly wise people develop expertise from their own situated challenges, mistakes, and reflections.

Knowledge management tries to shortcut this deep experiential process. But in doing so, it strips away the contextual relevance that gives knowledge its value. Codified knowledge fragments lose the hard-won complexity born of experience.

Worse still, KM can actually impede expertise development by diverting focus away from hands-on learning. The promise of leveraging pre-packaged knowledge is an illusion. Fostering real expertise requires hiring talented people into a supportive environment, and enabling them to learn through experience.

Heed Voltaire’s wisdom – there are no shortcuts to wisdom. Avoid the mirage of knowledge management. Focus instead on expertise developed through hands-on experience. Subjective insight cannot simply be extracted and downloaded. Management might choose to empower people to learn deeply from their own unique journeys. This is the path to true knowledge and competitive advantage. The folly of “learning from the experience of others” was exposed long ago.

{This post also serves as an additional chapter for my book Quintessence.]

The Far-Reaching Impacts of the Law of Unintended Consequences

January 8, 2024
Antimatter principle, Article, Culture change, Organisational Therapy, Product development, Quintessence, Self-organisation, Software development
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The Far-Reaching Impacts of the Law of Unintended Consequences

The law of unintended consequences states that actions will have unanticipated effects, often counterproductive ones. This concept profoundly applies to software development, and collaborative knowledge work more generally. In these domains involving interdependent human and technical factors, even well-intentioned plans often go awry.

This post explores key unintended consequences that manifest in software develeopment and collaborative knowledge work (CKW):

Technical Debt

Technical debt refers to the deliberate choice to take shortcuts in order to expedite software delivery. Like financial debt, it can be beneficial if consciously taken on and repaid through refactoring. However, scheduled repayments often get deferred as teams race to meet deadlines. The “interest” accrues as ongoing maintenance costs.

Feature Creep

The lean startup mentality of minimum viable products and iterative development has advantages. However, an unintended consequence is feature creep – products become bloated as developers continuously add but rarely subtract capabilities. And as management finds more and more pointless or decreasing value work to keep their standing teams busy. The result is complex products growing like topsy.

Information Overload

Modern collaboration tools enable unprecedented information sharing. But an unintended consequence is information overload, which hampers productivity and decision-making. Each piece of information seems useful, yet the cumulative result is a distracted, overburdened workforce.

Tunnel Vision

In software development, teams focus on completing narrowly defined tasks. This tunnel vision means losing sight of the big picture. Pressure to deliver assigned work leads to task-oriented rather than solution-oriented thinking. This tendency is exacerbated by the widespread case of work assignments coming from management rather than self-organising teams. The unintended consequence is misalignment, reduced value, and lack of integration.

Morale Issues

Open information flow and accountability bring major benefits. However, the unintended consequence can be decreased risk-taking, and morale problems. With every action visible and judged, workers avoid mistakes that could impact performance reviews. Innovation suffers when people focus on safe, incremental tasks and protecting thir own arses (cf. CYA).

Busywork

When work is misaligned with overall goals and strategies, inevitable busywork is the result. People spin their wheels on tasks that provide no real value to customers or the organisation and its customers. Energy is frittered away on going through the motions versus really attending to folks’ needs.

Perverse Incentives and Focus on Productivity

Reward systems, especially those aimed at boosting individuals’ productivity, undermine quality and teamwork. For example, compensating developers based on lines of code incentivises quantity over quality. Emphasising individual contributors over collaboration is another common unintended consequence.

Loss of Tacit Knowledge

Capturing processes, best practices, and “how-to” knowledge in wikis and databases can provide some benefts. However, over-reliance on documentation loses tacit knowledge that comes from experience and learned skills. Key contextual information gets lost when veterans leave without transfering hard-to-document knowledge.

Technical Monocultures

Standardisation has advantages in terms of compatibility and skill transferability. But an unintended consequence is the risk of monoculture technology stacks vulnerable to single points of failure. If a widely used framework has a major bug, many downstream systems are suddenly impacted.

Integration Headaches

Connecting modern microservices architectures can provide agility. However, an unintended consequence is integration headaches when stitching together disparate systems and data sources. Overally product reliability can also suffer. Development timelines often underestimate the complexity of integrating components.

Zombie Projects

Organisations generally find it difficult or impossible to kill failing initiatives. There is a tendency for questionable projects to lurch forward as “zombies” that nobody wants to end due to e.g. sunk cost fallacy. The unintended consequence is opportunity costs – as zombies consume budgets, workers and that rarest of all resources – management attention.

Mitigation Strategies

With sufficient foresight and systems thinking, organisations can choose to institute mitigating actions:

  • A systemic focus on the Antimatter Principle (have all efforts directed at attending to the needs of all the Folks That Matter™ Cf. The Needsscape).
  • Institute product management disciplines to curtail feature creep (Cf. Product Aikido).
  • Promote diversity and constructive dissent to counter groupthink.
  • Prioritise attending to folks’ needs, including capturing (e.g. documenting) knowledge that serves folks needs for reference information .
  • Stay vigilant w.r.t. unintended consequences (often only obvious through hindsight).
  • Engage with Organisational Psychotherapy so issues can be surfaced, and reflected upon, early.

By understanding where the Law of Unintended Consequences applies, teams can take proactive steps to minimise disruptive friction and dysfunction. The result is better alignment, usable products, and organisations where the whole exceeds the sum of misguided parts.

The Role of Organisational Psychotherapy in Catalysing Customer Change

January 6, 2024
Article, Business, Customers, Improvement, Management, Organisational Therapy
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The Role of Organisational Psychotherapy in Catalysing Customer Change

“If only we could get our market to see the incredible value of our services” – a constant refrain in supplier organisations everywhere.

In B2B sales particularly, customer organisations’ collective assumptions and beliefs are often the key constraint in both their becoming more effective in their own businesses, and their engaging with you as supplier to buy more of your organisation’s products and services. Here’s a few examples of such limiting assumptions and beliefs from specific sectors:

Manufacturing:

  • “We prioritize efficiency over agility” – Resistance to flexible solutions that disrupt tightly optimized production workflows.
  • “Innovation isn’t a priority” – Complacent attitude that hinders adoption of emerging technologies like IoT, AI etc.

Healthcare:

  • “Do no harm” – Excessive risk aversion that limits deploying new interventions without exhaustive proof.
  • “Clinicians know best” – Dismissive attitudes toward operational insights from managers or partners.

Financial Services:

  • “Regulations limit change” – Using compliance as an excuse to not undertake transformations.
  • “Our brand perception is all that matters” – Focusing excessively on marketing at the cost of customer-centricity.

Retail:

  • “Physical stores still reign” – Resistance to reimagining business models and channels despite ecommerce trends.
  • “Customer loyalty is high” – Taking customers for granted rather than innovating to excite them.

The Role of Organisational Psytchotherapy

Truly transformational change in customer organisations often benefits from addressing underlying psychological factors. This is where organisational psychotherapy can play a pivotal role in enabling customer organisations to embrace change, change which can mutually beneficial to both supplier and customers.

Kickstarting Change

Some ways psychotherapy principles can help suppliers ignite change in customer organisations are:

  • Surfacing unspoken fears about the impacts of change – fears that may be driving resistance.
  • Providing a safe space for customer organisations to voice anxieties and work through them.
  • Surfacing unhealthy group dynamics that reinforce status quo thinking.
  • Challenging embedded assumptions and blind spots through deep and facilitated inquiry and reflection.
  • Enabling open dialogue and vulnerability to build trust.
  • Helping customer teams align around shared goals and visualization.
  • Continually monitoring psychological constraints and misalignments as they emerge.

With compassion and emotional intelligence, consultants trained in organisational psychotherapy can work with customers to bust through mental barriers. This clears the path for implementing bold new visions in partnership with the enabling supplier.

The organisational psychotheapy lens is key to enabling transformations centered on shared assumptions and beliefs, not just processes. I hope these insights on blending organisational psychotherapy with change management and Theory of Constraints inspire you in your efforts to propel customer evolutions.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with organisational psychotherapy in enabling change in customer organisations. What unique insights has it provided you?

The Rise of AI Makes Soft Skills More Critical

January 5, 2024
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The Rise of AI Makes Soft Skills More Critical

We live in an era of rapid technological advancement. Artificial intelligence (AI) is automating many routine analytical and administrative tasks in the workplace. While this can lead to greater efficiencies, it also means that uniquely human skills are becoming more valuable. As many technology visionaries have noted, “We are entering the age of humanics, where high-touch will be at least as important as high-tech.”

In particular, soft skills like emotional intelligence, creativity, collaboration, and relationship building are in high demand. With AI handling rote cognitive tasks, humans can choose to focus on the abilities that machines do not possess. This includes cultivating joyful interpersonal relationships that uplift others.

Leaders today may choose to become adept at connecting with diverse teams, resolving conflicts, and fostering inclusive cultures. Customer service roles are becoming less transactional and more relational, with an emphasis on rapport building. Even some recruiters are prioritising candidates who demonstrate strong communication, adaptability, and likability.

The rise of AI is a reminder that true intelligence is about more than processing power. It is about harnessing relationships in service of humanity. With machines doing more of the routine work, humans can focus on the interpersonal, creative and interactive. We have a comparative advantage in the soft skills that bring fulfillment to our lives.

Rather than competing with machines, we can choose to collaborate with them. A wise embrace of AI will allow us to build a society where high-tech amplifies high-touch. We can create space for more arts, culture, caregiving, counseling, therapy, community-building and human interaction. By complementing algorithms with emotional intelligence, we can build a world that works better for all people.

Prof Niklaus Wirth RIP

January 4, 2024
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Prof Niklaus Wirth RIP

Professor Nicklaus Wirth was a huge influence in my early career. I worked in Pacsal for several years, including for a time serving on the ISO Pascal Language Standard commitee. I never could quite get along with the limitations of Pascal implementations though, so when Prof Wirth produced Modula-2, I was more than ready to transition.

Over the next few years I produced a bunch of Modula-2 compilers, based on the ETH Zurich reference implemention (PDP-11). These included RT11, RSTS-E and RSX implementaions, as well as VAX. The RSTS-E implementation was particularly interesting for me, as it supported memory mapping to deliver a full 4MB address space for Modula-2 programs – on those PDP-11s with the necessary hardware support. I also wrote a bunch of programs in Modula-2 (for clients).

I had the inestimable pleasure to meet with Prof Wirth in Zurich a couple of times, although never knew he had an interest in R/C flight (a long time hobby of mine, too).

A Short Biography

Nicklaus Wirth (1934-2024) was a Swiss computer scientist who made significant contributions to programming languages and algorithms. He was best known as the designer of several influential programming languages, including Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon.

Wirth studied electrical engineering at the ETH Zurich, where he received his master’s degree in 1959 and his PhD in 1963. During his studies, he became fascinated with computer programming and the development of programming languages.

In the 1960s, Wirth worked on the design of the programming language Euler. This led him to recognise the need for a new language suited for teaching programming as well as serving as the basis for real-world software development. This goal led to the creation of Pascal, which Wirth developed in the late 1960s and refined in the early 1970s.

Pascal became highly influential as a teaching language and gained widespread use in industry and academia. Its combination of simple, elegant syntax with strong data structuring capabilities made it very popular. Pascal proved enormously influential on many subsequent languages, including Modula-2, Ada, and Java.

In the 1970s, Wirth developed the programming language Modula-2 as a successor to Pascal. Modula-2 built upon Pascal’s foundations but included new features for modular programming and separate compilation. This allowed for the creation of larger, more complex software systems. Modula-2 influenced many later languages built for systems programming.

Wirth also made significant contributions to algorithm design, including the development of efficient data structures and algorithms. His 1974 paper on program development by stepwise refinement presented a structured approach to program design that proved widely influential.

In the 1980s, Wirth developed the Oberon system, which included the Oberon programming language and integrated development environment. Oberon continued Wirth’s focus on simplicity, efficiency, and modularity. The Oberon system enabled entire applications to be developed entirely within the language environment.

Wirth was recognized with many honors for his pioneering contributions to programming languages and algorithms. He received the ACM Turing Award in 1984, the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award in 2000, and the prestigious Kyoto Prize in 2014.

Wirth’s elegant and efficient programming languages had an enormous influence over the past half-century of computer science. His methodical approach to language and system design set a high standard for simplicity and clarity. Nicklaus Wirth’s contributions played a foundational role in shaping the landscape of modern software development. He passed away on January 1, 2024 at the age of 89. Though he is no longer with us, his pioneering work lives on through the many languages and systems he helped create.

Kent Beck’s Tribute

Kent Beck just posted a touching tribute to the late Prof Wirth. I reproduce it here for folks that , like myself, can’t get along with Substack. (Plus I can’t for the life of me figure out how to link to the substack article).

“I first encountered Professor Wirth remotely in my first college programming course, 203 Intro to Programming. We used Pascal as our programming language. I had been programming for 6 years by then, completely by the seat of my pants, in BASIC, FORTRAN, & 6800 assembly language.

Pascal came as a shock. There were lots of things I couldn’t do in Pascal. There was a way to express a program & you’d better get used to it. So I did.

We soon got our first Unix machine, a VAX 780. I moved on to C, then LISP & Prolog, but I always remembered the utter simplicity of Pascal.

I wasn’t aware of my second encounter with Professor Wirth. 1997-1999 our family lived in Zumikon, a village outside Zürich. On the ridge above the village was a remote control airplane landing strip. We would drive by & see the guys flying planes & helicopters.

My third encounter with Professor Wirth was the one that would change my life. Toward the end of our stay in Switzerland I was invited to speak at a conference in Nice. Professor Wirth was speaking also. Somehow I found out that we shared flights so I did something I ordinarily would never do, I approached the ticket counter & said, “My colleague Professor Wirth & I are flying together. Would it be possible for us to sit together?” “Certainly, sir.”

Then the flight was delayed 4 hours. I sat down, cracked my laptop, & started programming.

Four hours later we boarded the plane. I sat down in the middle seat next to this wizened guy with disturbingly bright eyes. He looked non-plussed as I explained what I’d pulled to get there. We soon got to talking programming, though, & conversation flowed. Turns out that when he found out about the delay, he went home & programmed. Soon we were just a couple of geeks, sitting there talking geeking.

He was one of those guys flying remote control helicopters. Except that he programmed the helicopter & the controller himself, in Oberon. That’s what he’d been doing at home—working on the flight control software.

Extreme Programming was just starting to crackle & pop, so I’m sure I was a bit over-enthusiastic. After I had given an impassioned explanation of incremental design & refactoring, he paused, looked at me with those eyes, and, “I suppose that’s all very well if you don’t know how to design software.” Mic. Drop.

The other moment I remember was that as were approaching Nice he said, “Do you speak any French? Speak French to them. They love that.”

Lessons

Four lessons I learned from Professor Wirth:

  • First principles. He was working from a clear set of principles in all his language & programming environment work. He knew what he preferred but he wasn’t satisfied until he knew why.
  • Focus. If he knew you weren’t wasting his time he was generous. If not…
  • Personal computing. The computer was a device to expand the human mind. His take on this (check out Oberon & descendants) was different than Forth or Smalltalk, but all shared the vision of human as crafter & computer as tool (a perspective we would do well to come back to).
  • Geek for life. Professor Wirth was 70 when he was writing embedded software & he was thinking about it so intensely that he fit it even into the cracks of his life. I still have a ways to go to 70 (well, not that far), but I intend to keep geeking.

Why Read My Blog

January 3, 2024
Article, Culture change, Feedback, Memeology, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence, Software development
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Why Read My Blog

Wishing a joyful New Year to my host of regular readers – welcome back! It’s great to have you here as we continue exploring how to create truly joyful and human-centered workplaces. If you find value in my posts, please consider sharing my blog with your colleagues, friends and online communities who may be interested. Personal recommendations are so appreciated!

For new visitors, hello and thanks for finding my blog! I’m FlowChainSensei, and my passion is helping organisations transform themselves into places where people are fulfilled and joyfully engaged in their work. I draw from my 50+ years in the software business to provide practical insights into topics like:

  • Building trusting, empowered teams
  • Promoting flexible work arrangements
  • Rethinking rigid processes and bureaucracy
  • Excelling together, with compassion and humility
  • Fostering a culture of learning and growth

Thriving Workplaces

My goal is to challenge conventional thinking and offer ideas, examples, and advice to help you cultivate a workplace where people thrive. Here’s why you might choose to subscribe:

  • Gain unique perspectives for reimagining work
  • Get inspired by real-world examples and recommendations
  • Discuss/debate ideas with a community of forward-thinkers
  • Help make working together something we love to do, not have to do

Tell Your Friends, Peers, Bosses

To my regular readers, I so appreciate you being part of this community and movement. To new readers, welcome! I hope you’ll subscribe and engage. Let’s reimagine work together! And to all, please consider sharing my blog with others who may find value in rethinking work.

Win Free Books!

In my three organisational psychotherapy books I both summarise and go into much detail on many of the posts appearing in my Think Different blog. BTW The competition for free copies of my Hearts Over Diamonds +  Memeology + Quintessence books is again open.

The Role of the Modern Manager: Creating Environments for People to Excel

January 2, 2024
Article, Culture change, Fellowship, Management
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The Role of the Modern Manager: Creating Environments for People to Excel

The driving purpose behind most of my 1000+ blog posts here on Think Different is exploring how we might collectively foster environments that enable people to give of their best.

What if we created workplaces and environments where everyone feels respected, trusted, and intrinsically motivated to do meaningful work? How could empathy, compassion and vulnerability strengthen teams?

Imagine prioritising inspiration over control, coaching over criticising, unlocking potential over punishing failure. What could empathic structures, self-direction and flexibility allow us to achieve together?

Fire All the Managers

In his thought-provoking 2011 HBR article “First, Fire All the Managers”, Gary Hamel makes a compelling case for phasing out managers entirely. He argues that hierarchical management structures inhibit agility, innovation, and engagement. While eliminating management altogether seems radical, Hamel raises important points on rejecting traditional collective assumptions and beliefs about management.

Exponential Achievement

This journey requires examining collective assumptions, taking risks and pioneering new models. It may mean temporary discomfort yet enables exponential human achievement.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. But the invitation is open – to walk together toward enlightened working, one thoughtful experiment at a time. To choose fellowship over hierarchy, vision over rules, and nonviolence over Fear, Obligation, Guilt and Shame.

Enormous Possibilities

Progress won’t happen overnight. The path involves stumbles yet holds enormous possibility. My hope is my Think Different posts help spark insight and courage to create environments where every person can thrive.

What ideas do you have on this journey? What approaches resonate with you? By sharing perspectives, we discover the way forward together. The destination can best be uncovered collaboratively.

Feedback

Let me know if this resonates as an inviting post tying back to my core focus on human-centered environments while headlining the overall purpose of this long-running  blog. I appreciate you encouraging and supporting me to refine the framing and messaging!

What is “Caring”?

January 2, 2024
Antimatter principle, Article, Attendants, Caring, Compassion, Culture change, Empathy
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What is “Caring”?

In a world that seems more divided and impersonal each day, it’s easy to lose sight of what it really means to care for one another. But what does it truly mean to care?

At its core, caring is about attending to the needs of others with compassion. Caring people make an effort to understand what others need to live joyful, fulfilling lives. They seek to support people emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Their acts of caring may be large or small – from listening patiently to a friend in need to volunteering at a homeless shelter. But in all cases, caring stems from a genuine concern for the welfare of fellow human beings.

In their book Compassionomics, economists Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli provide copper-bottomed evidence that caring produces tangible benefits both for givers and receivers alike. Studies show that people who volunteer tend to be healthier and live longer. Compassion training in schools reduces violence and bullying. Caring healthcare professionals have patients with better outcomes. And people who feel cared for are more resilient in the face of trauma and stress. In study after study, caring proves critical for individual and collective wellbeing.

Of course, caring can be challenging. It requires generosity, sacrifice, and emotional intelligence. There are times we must care for people we find difficult. And earnest caring always involves some risk – the risk of rejection, disappointment or loss. But as Trzeciak and Mazzarelli explain, these risks pale next to the regrets of a life spent without meaningful caring connections.

In the end, caring is not about sympathy cards or grand gestures. It is about small acts of service and support, performed consistently and sincerely. Caring is embracing our shared humanity. It is a commitment to be present and helpful in the lives of others. And it is ultimately the bond that enables human flourishing even in hard times.

Is caring important to you? Does giving and receiving of compassion feature in your life? Perhaps if we can recover the simple art of caring for one another, some of the discord in our society will dissipate, leaving more space for the ties that truly matter.

Universal Incompetence: Navigating Times of Rapid Change

January 2, 2024
Alien tech, Antimatter principle, Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Doctrine
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Universal Incompetence: Navigating Times of Rapid Change

We hear constantly that we live in an era of rapid technological, social, and economic change. With each passing year, new knowledge, innovations and disruptions reshape the world around us in unpredictable ways. In this turbulent environment, it can often feel like no one really knows what they’re doing anymore. Expertise that was highly valued yesterday becomes rapidly obsolete. As a result,the phenomenon of universal incompetence pervades society.

Yet those in leadership positions feel immense pressure to pretend otherwise. Politicians, business executives, middle management, consultants, SMEs, and heads of organisations all desperately try to project an image of competence and preparedness. They spout confident predictions and gloss over their failed responses to emerging crises. No one wants to admit they feel lost and unqualified to lead.

It’s as if we are living in a modern day Emperor’s New Clothes fable. The rapid changes stripping away the competencies of the powerful are evident to all. But no one seems willing to openly state the obvious – the emperor has no clothes. For fear of instability and career suicide, the crowd maintains the illusion of competence at the top.

The great historian of science Thomas Kuhn analysed this phenomenon in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn showed how scientific progress occurs in fits and starts, rather than smoothly over time. Long periods of traditional “normal science” are periodically disrupted by radical innovations that upend existing paradigms. After these paradigm shifts, scientists must scramble to make sense of the new landscape. Even the experts feel like novices, unaware of what knowledge or skills the future may require.

The same pattern applies today outside of science. Technology and social changes are accelerating. Once-useful skills like proficiency with certain assumptions, beliefs and ways of working quickly become irrelevant. Jobs that seemed stable for decades can be automated virtually overnight. Almost no one can keep up with the pace of change or accurately predict what abilities and competencies will be valued next.

This situation leaves individuals, organisations, and society itself feeling lost and directionless. Leaders quietly wonder if they have the right talents and ideas to guide their organisations through turmoil. Educators struggle to prepare students for a future that remains unseen. Citizens feel their democratic institutions have become inadequate and irrelevant for the challenges ahead.

To navigate these rapids of change, we can choose, above all, to embrace humility. The pace of transformation is simply too great for anyone to imagine they have all the answers. Rather than vainly seeking competence, we might choose to strive for openness, flexibility and growth. This mindset will allow us to experiment with new ideas and abandon failed ones quickly as we learn, and as circumstances evolve.

Although the loss of stability is disorienting, it also contains the seeds of opportunity. While incompetence reigns, possibilities abound to craft novel solutions and chart new courses. Our admitted ignorance frees us from old constraints and categories. With a sense of creative curiosity, we can view this time as one of exploration and invention rather than collapse.

The winds of change are blowing fiercely. None of us can hope to grasp them fully. But if we face the future with humility and courage, we may yet build a world where rapid progress need not mean perpetual confusion and turmoil. Even in strange seas, humanity, attending to folks’ needs, and steady hands can show the way.