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The Organisational Psychotherapy Solution for Easier Hiring

February 9, 2022
Antimatter principle, Article, Culture change, Organisational Therapy, Recruiting, Rightshifting
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The Organisational Psychotherapy Solution for Easier Hiring

I’ve hired many people in my time, and every day it seems to be more difficult finding the right people. 

Most organisation still have the mentality that says they’re doing people a favour by considering them for an open position. Not that hiring for open positions is too smart, in any case.

The Bus

The old adage goes, “get the right people on the bus, and only then sort out where they might sit”. In other words, don’t hire into open positions, hire into the organisation at large, and then find the best fitting role for each new hire. There may not even be an existing position for the best candidates, in which case new positions must be created. 

Employer Branding

Gone are the days when a simple ad or commission for a recruiter would attract suitable candidates. These days, unless your organisation is well known and highly regardsed in the jobs market, you’re highly unlikely to attract the candidates you seek. 

Deming’s 95:5

Deming’s 95:5 implies that there is no such thing as “best candidates”. It’s the system (the way the work works) that dictates 95% of the productivity/performance of each new hire.

Collaborative Knowledge Work

The future of work is collaborative knowledge work (CKW). Potential new hires know this instinctively, and studiously avoid organisations that seem unaware or ill-adapted to this new reality.

The Organisational Psychotherapy Assist

Organisational Psychotherapy can assist in making hiring easier in a number of ways:

  • By helping the organisation build a culture that actively attracts candidates (much better to having candidates queuing round the block for positions, rather than having them ridicule your organisation as a cultural dinosaur). See also: Rightshifting and the Marshall Model.
  • By surfacing your organisation’s existing collective assumptions and beliefs – assumptions and beliefs which most typically lead to hiring the wrong people, and missing out on the candidates you really need.
  • By identifying the cognitive biases which lead to exclusion of much of the available talent pool.
  • By convincing potential candidates that your organisation takes them and their needs seriously, and that you are determined to build an environment in which they can do their best work (see also: Harter & Buckingham, 2016). 
  • By adopting well-established management practices, best suited to CKW.
  • By awareness of Management Monstrosities and how to avoid them (potential new hires can spot these monstrosities from a mile aways, even if the hiring organisation in blind to them).

Further Reading

Harter, J., Buckingham, M. & Gallup Organization (2016). First, Break All The Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. Gallup Press.

 

The Tech Leader as Organisational Therapist

February 7, 2022
Antimatter principle, Article, Culture change, Needs, Organisational Therapy, Purpose
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The Tech Leader as Organisational Therapist

[Inspired by “The Physician Leader as Logotherapist“, substituting “tech” for “medicine”]

The existential cure for what ails the Tech Industries today can be summarised in four phrases:

  1. Folks’ (customers’, etc.) needs come first.
  2. Right action and right conduct.
  3. Focus on needs and not money.
  4. Discover what life expects of us.

In his recent PBS special, “Surviving the Bottom Line,” Hedrick Smith documented how industries such as manufacturing and banking are sacrificing their employees and the needs of their customers in the quest for stock price appreciation and bigger dividends. (Smith 1998).

Further Reading

Smith, H. “Surviving the Bottom Line.” Frontline, PBS. January 16. 1998.

Washburn, E.R.. (2021). The Physician Leader as Logotherapist – Physician Executive Leadership. [online] Available at: https://indexarticles.com/health-fitness/physician-executive/the-physician-leader-as-logotherapist-physician-executive-leadership/ [Accessed 7 Feb. 2022].

Customer Success

February 6, 2022
Antimatter principle, Article, Business, Needs, Organisational Therapy, Productivity, Quality
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Customer Success

The idea of “customer success” is widely understood in the halls of business, if not widely acted upon. “Customer success” is an outcome, sought for its contribution to a business’ own success. This sought outcome carries with it the belief that if a business’ customers can be helped to greater success, greater profits, market share, margins, revenues, customer loyalty, retention, reduced churn, etc. will accrue.

Put another way, businesses focussed on “customer success” believe it’s a means, maybe even THE means, to increase their own success.

In this way, we can see that:

  • It’s a belief.
  • It’s a belief widely understood, even though not widely held or practiced.
  • It’s a means – or strategy – to an end (the end in mind being success to the business doing the helping), not an end in itself.
  • Other means a.k.a. strategies to business success may appear more compelling.
  • Given my previous post “The Fifth Absolute of Quality” which describes “customer success” as being THE purpose of quality, those businesses which reject “customer success” as the means to their own success will likely also reject quality initiatives and programmes.
  • “Customer success” is not synonymous with “customer satisfaction” (far from it).
  • What customers need for their increased success is a subset of their total needs (other needs may exist unrelated to the “success” of that customer organisation, in particular the needs of the Core Group, and other Folks That Matter™️ within those customer organisations).

To sum up, “customer success” is widely understood, although less widely practiced.

The Organisational Psychotherapy Analogue

I posit that the idea of “Attending to Folks’ Needs” – the declared purpose of Organisational Psychotherapy – is analogous to the idea of “customer success”.

Businesses embracing the idea of “Attending to folks’ needs” believe that doing so is a means to increase their own success.

The difference comes from few indeed seeing the connection between attending to folks’ needs and the success of their business.

Some observations on the idea that “Attending to folks’ needs” will enhance the success of the attending business or organisation:

  • It’s a belief.
  • It’s an uncommon belief, held by only a few.
  • The mechanisms by which attending to folks’ needs deliver business success are understood by few.
  • It’s a means – or strategy – to an end (the end in mind being business success for the business attending to folks’ needs), not an end in itself.
  • Few have encountered the idea of attending to folks’ needs, fewer have considered it as a means for the success of their business, and fewer yet have adopted it.
  • Other means a.k.a. strategies for its own success may appear more compelling for the business.

To sum up, “Attending to folks’ needs” is not widely known nor understood as an idea, so not widely seen as a viable means to business success, and so not often embraced or practiced.

– Bob

Postscript

More eagle-eyed and sharp-witted readers may have noticed that this post contains two, apparently different means to business success:

  1. Focus on the success of the business’ customers.
  2. Focus on the needs of all the Folks That Matter.

Actually, I see this a a false dichotomy; as 1) is a subset of 2):

The Purpose of Organisational Psychotherapy

February 4, 2022
Antimatter principle, Article, Culture change, Customers, Organisational Therapy, Psychology
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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

The Fifth Absolute of Quality

February 4, 2022
Article, Culture change, Quality
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The Fifth Absolute of Quality

In the heyday of Phil Crosby and his “Camelot” (Philip Crosby Associates – PCA), there were four absolutes of quality. I’ve posted before about these, as well as reframing them in the Antimatter Principle vocabulary. 

In recent times, PCA have come up with the Fifth Absolute of Quality. Grounded in the writings of Phil Crosby, but not an absolute he himself listed, the Fifth Absolute of Quality describes the purpose of quality, and reads:

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

“We took a hard look at the original Absolutes because we realized that a company could live by them and still fail… Building an organization that knows how to focus on customer success and make it a repeatable, continuous process is the next decade’s primary challenge.”

~ Wayne Kost

The Antimatter Principle Frame

As with my previous post reframing Crosby’s original Four Absolutes of Quality, I’ve taken the liberty to reframe this Fifth Absolute similarly. It reads:

The purpose of quality is ensuring we meet everyone’s needs, NOT giving people what they want.

– Bob

Further Reading

http://www.qualitymag.com. (2004). Customer Success, Not Satisfaction, Is Key. [online] Available at: https://www.qualitymag.com/articles/83845-customer-success-not-satisfaction-is-key [Accessed 4 Feb. 2022].

Why Your Dev Team Can Benefit From Organisational Psychotherapy

February 2, 2022
Article, Organisational Therapy
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Why Your Dev Team Can Benefit From Organisational Psychotherapy

  • To address the constraints which lie outside the control and influence of you and your team (i.e. constraints and blockers residing in the wider organisation, which often includes the upper management, their assumptions and policies).
  • To improve the role of the dev team within the organisation as a whole.
  • To improve connections and relationships with folks outside the organisation (typically, customers and suppliers, sometimes, regulators).
  • To build relationships via e.g. procurement/purchasing dept. with suppliers.
  • To harmonise and align the goals of the organisation with the goals of the team.
  • Less stress for all concerned.

– Bob

What’s So Weird About Organisational Psychotherapy?

February 1, 2022
Article, Organisational Therapy
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What’s So Weird About Organisational Psychotherapy?

I mean, it’s not like most businesses are run on purely rational, logical lines. Many businesses run on Faith (or various denominations), Astrology, Tarot, iChing (e.g. iChing divination), cleromancy, clairvoyance, Haruspicy, Hepatomancy, Anthropomancy, the Magic 8-Ball, HiPPO, and the like.

Why then does Organisational Psychotherapy trigger the “Wow, that’s weird!” response, more often than not? And more often that most of the above-listed approaches?

Is it some carry-over from the world of individual psychotherapy? Certainly,  in many parts of the world still, individual psychotherapy is often seen as weird.

Or maybe is the idea that organisations have a collective psyche that folks find weird?

Or maybe it’s the idea that collective assumptions and beliefs have any role in organisational performance and effectiveness?

Or maybe it’s because folks working in IT, seeing themselves as masters of technology, are blind to the role of people things, interpersonal relationships, and the like, in organisational performance?

Or maybe its the scientific basis for psychotherapy and Organisational Psychotherapy that disturbs?

Or maybe it’s just its sheer novelty and departure from the prevailing norms of business and organisational management?

Or maybe some combination of all the above?

In any case, the overwhelmingly most frequent reaction whenever I mention Organisational Psychotherapy is definitely “Wow. That’s weird!”

I take solace from the observation that psychotherapy itself was thought wildly weird by most people up till the 1950s (Freud started his practice in Vienna, Austria, circa 1886).

What’s your view on the “Wow, that’s weird!” response to Organisational Psychotherapy?

– Bob

What Is Normative Learning?

February 1, 2022
Article, Learning, Organisational Therapy, Psychology
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What Is Normative Learning?

The phrase “normative learning” seems to many to be arcane, obscure, even impenetrable. But the idea it labels is simple enough:

Normative approaches are those that deliberately attempt to change norms, attitudes and beliefs.

Compare the normative approach to change, with its less effective cousins, rational and coercive approaches to change.

The phrase “normative learning” therefore, labels learning that:

  • Arises from direct experiences, often, experiences of counter-intuitive truths.
  • Changes individual and/or collective norms, attitudes and beliefs.
  • Results in changes in behaviours.

Change is a Normative Experience

As John Seddon eloquently puts it “Change is a normative experience”. Which is to say, that effective change (of attitudes, assumptions and beliefs) relies on people experiencing things for themselves, and learning from those experiences about which of their assumption are falsey or inappropriate. 

Only when behaviours change can we say learning has happened.

– Bob

Further Reading

Seddon, J. (2019). Beyond Command and Control. Vanguard Consulting Ltd. (Chapter 2, p 26-29).

Chin, R., Benne, K.D. and Bennis, W.G. (1969). General Strategies for Effecting Changes in Human Systems. Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc.

Marshall, R.W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Software Development Organisations. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub). (Chapter 9).