The Purpose of Organisational Psychotherapy

Following on from my previous post, concerning the Fifth Absolute of Quality, which reads:

The purpose of quality is customer success, NOT customer satisfaction.

it occurs to me that maybe there’s some clarity or insight to be found in similarly describing the purpose of Organisational Psychotherapy:

The purpose of Organisational Psychotherapy is to see folks’ needs met, NOT to see them happy, or satisfied. 

(Note: “Folks”, here, encompasses some or all of: customers, employees, owners, managers, suppliers, regulators, and society at large). See also: The Folks That Matter™️.

 This does beg the question:

“Why does meeting folks’ need matter? Where’s the point in that?” 

I invite you to consider the description of the purpose of quality, above. This describes the purpose of quality as customer success. “Customer success” can only be defined by the customers themselves. And each customer may have very different ideas as to what constitutes their “success”.

Similarly, with Organisational Psychotherapy, each of the “folks” may have very different needs, and these folks are, each, the only ones that can define these needs, or, more accurately , the only ones that can declare when their needs have been met. 

Organisational Psychotherapy implicitly assumes that when folks’ need are being met, both those folks, and the folks attending to their needs, have a more joyful experience.

So, “seeing folks’ needs are met” is in many ways akin to “customer success”. And as to the begging question: Why do (some) organisations prioritise “customer success”? Best ask them, maybe?

– Bob