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?