Chapter 16: Organizational Therapy
Based on my experience as an organizational consultant and therapist, I have constructed a theory that provides a framework for predicting change in organizational cultures: I have succeeded in understanding why change occurs; I have developed a prescriptive theory for managing organizational transitions on the lifecycle; and I have tested that prescriptive theory with and through my associates.
That theory and practice provides organizations with several distinct advantages. It enables them to discriminate between the normal problems they can handle internally and the abnormal prob- lems that require outside intervention. Furthermore, because the stages of the organizational lifecycle are predictable and repetitive, knowing their location in the lifecycle permits organizations to take preventive measures to mitigate anticipated problems or to avoid them altogether.
The Nature of Life and Problems
Living means continuously solving problems. The fuller one's life, the more complex the problems one must resolve. That is true also for organizations. Successful management is continuously solving problems. By now you understand that an organization is without problems only when nothing is changing-when it is dead. To solve problems and have no new, increasingly complex problems emerge is equivalent to dying.
Managers who understand this theory of corporate lifecycles feel liberated by the realization that having problems is not unusual. Having problems is normal. Problems come with the territory called living and-in organizational situations-managing. What causes a person to feel inadequate is the belief that only he or she has problems. That can have a debilitating effect. Knowing which of your problems are normal and shared by others in comparable situations helps you understand that some of your problems are caused not by you but by your situation.
One day, an executive who had been attending my lectures for some time came to me for advice. He wanted to talk about his many seemingly overwhelming problems. He offered to drive me to my next appointment and, as we drove along, he described his crises. I noted that they were not all that severe. I even volunteered to describe my own managerial problems to give him a point of reference. He was surprised.
"You, of all people, have problems? You look like you have it all together."
It was my turn to be surprised. Why would he think that I had no problems? I realized that he had placed me on a no-problems pedestal just as I had done with others. But we all have problems. The people who make everything look easy are like ducks: They look calm on the surface, but underneath they are paddling frantically.
But there are problems, and there are problems. Not all prob- lems are normal; and, since we must have problems, what are the right problems to have? Let me answer with an example. Suppose I describe a person with the following characteristics. He cries a lot, wakes up in the middle of the night, and drinks milk every few hours. Is this behavior a normal problem? Most people would say, yes, because they assume I am describing a newborn baby. What if I told you that I have been describing a 45-year-old CEO? What do you say? Normal?
Normal vs. Abnormal Problems
Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
-Alphonse Karr, LES GUÊPES
The above quotation I believe applies to abnormal problems. They are chronic. You try to solve them, and you believe you did, but they reappear in a new vest. You throw them out the window, and, in the darkest hours of the night, they crawl back into your mind.
Normal problems are the lessons of life.
Everyone has to learn, and we all learn by solving problems. We continue to have problems because none of us has learned everything there is to know.
Since we will never know all there is to know, we should be prepared for endless normal problems. Get ready: You will have problems for the rest of your life. Where do problems come from? What is it that organizations do not know? As I have explained in earlier chapters, for an organization to be effective and efficient in the short and long run, it must perform four managerial roles: PAEI. No organization is born in Prime, so every organization needs to develop those roles. Every organization experiences problems because at any point in time at least one of the roles is not yet developed. Even in Prime, where all roles should be fully developed, organizations contend with the problem of staying in Prime, seeing to it that none of the roles decays.
Most organizations instinctively develop one managerial role at a time, following the typical path rather than working to enhance all necessary managerial roles simultaneously, in the appropriately balanced fashion I describe as the optimal path (see Figure 16-1). In developing one role-one capability-at a time, there is always the danger that if the organization runs into a difficulty, it will experi- ence abnormal and, perhaps eventually, pathological problems.
Figure 16-1: Normal vs. Abnormal Problems
The Nature of Change Change
Change is inevitable and eternal. As I have stated already, change causes external and internal disintegration. If an organization does not adapt to external changes, it is out of step with its market and no longer satisfies the need for which it existed. In the competitive envi- ronment of the business world, its customers disenfranchise such an organization. They stop patronizing the establishment. Sales volume of product units flatten, then fall. The organization is externally dis- integrated: Its capabilities don't match the needs of the marketplace. Change also causes internal disintegration. The organization may try to adapt reactively or proactively to the changes in its external environment, but it runs into problems because all organizations, like all systems, comprise subsystems, and those subsystems do not change synchronically. Some subsystems change faster than others, and that lack of coordination causes the organization to break apart, burst at the seams, come unglued. Even if an organization is not struggling to match changes in the external environment, it can still disintegrate internally. Internal changes occur independently of the external environment: People change as their individual needs change. Consequently, disintegration is inevitable, whether or not you play an active role in its cause.
Things fall apart. And unless you do something, chaos ensues. But human nature cannot accept disintegration as a permanent phenomenon. Humans strive to reintegrate. If they fail, they become psychologically, pathologically disintegrated.
Recently, I was introduced to the work of the therapists Carlos Sluzki and Sara Cobb, and I came to realize that disintegration is not a steady state. Humans cannot endure disintegration on an ongoing basis. They need to solve, explain, and find meaning in their experience. Individually, we create scenarios to explain our problems: Our parents messed us up; our teachers or bosses are the source of all our problems; and so forth. To bring problems to closure, we need to explain them. When all fails we turn to God, assigning Him or Her all the credit or the blame. You've heard the explanations: "The devil made me do it," "It is God's will." People search for integration. 5 We need somehow to explain our problems and in so doing integrate what has fallen apart.
The way we "integrate" can have desired or undesired repercussions. It is that "somehow" that can generate deeper problems. In order to give meaning to their problems, organizations, societies, and people create story lines-narrative explanations that serve as perceived solutions. Many people assume that simply by knowing their problems, they have found the solutions. Yet we now know that the "solutions" we find often reproduce the problems we are trying to solve. 6 Religion is an integrating force, which in one form or another, grows in appeal as change and disintegration accelerate. Not all religious solutions have a unifying and healing effect. Some religions, for example, embrace racist or fascist ideologies that disintegrate people as well as societies. They are dysfunctional and destructive to humanity as a whole? As change accelerates, we face more, not fewer, religious wars of global dimensions.
To repeat, not all narratives, although they integrate, are functional. The story line can be functional or dysfunctional depending on what it does to the organization and what we do with it. Often, such explanations are what stand in the way of organizations' ability to address the challenges they face. Some stories stymie the capability of the person, organization, or society to keep changing and adapting. They integrate, but they also freeze the status quo. They are like broken arms that have been set badly. They heal, but they cannot move well or easily. A surgeon might have to break a badly set arm to reset it so that it can heal properly. As leaders of organizations or organizational therapists (historically and still identified as consultants), our task is to analyze the functionality of the existing integration. If it is dysfunctional, it is our role to dismantle it and work with the organization to develop a new functional narrative, a new framework that not only integrates but also allows future adaptations as the situation changes.l 1 The organization should have inherent capabilities to reintegrate itself by itself. Or as Mary Kay, the famous and successful founder of a marketing network, expressed it best, "If you want to see the secret of my success, let me show you the scars on my knees."
Success is not the measure of how rarely you fall, but how many times you get up.
The Role of a Therapist
If the cause for all problems is disintegration, the antidote for all problems is, by definition, integration. The job of your medical doctor or family therapist is to integrate or heal, to make the system a healthy whole, capable of continuously recreating itself as one. (Note that the words whole and heal are both derivatives of the Indo-European root, kailo, meaning whole, uninjured.)
Management, leaders of organizations, and professional consultants should be organizational therapists who cause change in the first place and then heal by reuniting the pieces that fell apart due to the change. Capable management should handle normal problems while organizational therapists should be called in to deal with the abnormal problems.
Management and management consultants should be responsible for leading the necessary and desired change, diagnosing subsequent organizational disintegration, and providing a process to reunite the parts on a new plateau. Each organizational leader is a therapist of sorts: introducing change, shattering organizationally dysfunctional old paradigms of integration, and reintegrating to a new functional whole. Of course, the newly integrated whole is subject to the same process of change, disintegration, and reintegration. When an organization's leader cannot direct this process because it is too complicated or the leader has inadequate experience, an external intervention is called for.
Successful management or therapy (so-called consulting) does not just eliminate problems. It should focus energy on removing problems the organization is experiencing in the current stage of its lifecycle, establishing foundations, and preparing the organization to deal with the problems of the next stage. An organization in Prime is not exempt from this requirement. Like an Olympic gold-medal win- ner, the cherished medal is not a signal to stop. To stay in Prime, an organization needs to continue training and competing. An organization in Prime has to predict the avoidable causes of its impending aging. An organization can remain in Prime so long as it continuous- ly rejuvenates itself.
Types of Integration
There are two overlapping types of integration: external and internal cohesion.
External cohesion is the degree to which an organization is integrated with its external environment. It is a function of how well the organization integrated its capabilities with the opportunities in the marketplace. For example, product diversification should reflect market segmentation.
If, to create and maintain external cohesion, an organization dedicates functional energy to satisfying its clients' needs, I call its effort "external marketing."
Internal cohesion is a reflection of the degree of cooperation within an organization, and the energy an organization expends to achieve internal cooperation is internal integration. That is a func- tion of mutual trust and respect within the organization's culture. Some organizations have no internal integration, no culture of cooperation, and no mutual trust and respect. In order to bring about predictable results, members of such organizations have to devote time and energy to "selling" their ideas to each other. I call such corporate politicking "internal marketing." That waste of energy is a negative phenomenon.
Dedicating energy to external marketing is a positive move. It integrates an organization with its changing environment. Internal marketing, on the other hand, is a sign of trouble. It is a waste. It usurps energy that could be devoted to external marketing. An organization characterized by mutual trust and respect has minimal, if any, internal marketing.
When there is internal cohesion-mutual trust and respect, which must be made a characteristic of the culture and nurtured continuously-the organization enjoys internal peace, and it can dedicate its limited and fixed energy to external integration. When an organization achieves and maintains both external and internal cohesion, it enjoys sustainable, desirable, and predictable results.
Physics teaches us that, at any point in time, stable systems have fixed energy. For instance, even the most energetic and productive person has no more than 24 hours in his or her day. Organizations and countries, like people, have fixed energy at a point in time.
Over the years, I have observed that organizations-and, may I suggest, all systems-allocate this fixed energy in predictable ways: Internal marketing invariably takes precedence over external marketing; the energy available and applied to external marketing is the surplus, if any, after all the needs of internal marketing have been satisfied.
Here is an example I use in my lectures:
I ask the audience, "How many of you would like to travel with me to Los Angeles at the end of my lecture? I'll show you how, in one week, you can make $100 million tax-free. It's legal. You don't need to put up any cash. And it's completely risk free. This is a serious offer," I say. Needless to say, all hands rise.
"You have raised your hand," I say, "because you have assumed something. You have assumed you are healthy. I wonder whether you would have raised your hand if during the last break someone had given you a note, saying, 'Your doctor called. You have cancer, and you must report to the hospital tomorrow to start chemotherapy or have surgery.' In that situation, you would not raise your hand. You would have responded to my offer, saying, 'I wish you had made me that offer last month.'"
Then I continue. "How many of you have been unable to make a decision or have made a very bad decision because you were suffering from a terrible cold or a terrible headache?" Again, lots of hands.
"What if you want to visit your friend who has been hospitalized after being in a car accident? Doesn't the doctor limit your visit to just a few minutes? Why, do you suppose? A sick person needs to dedicate all his energy to taking care of his body. Only then can he dedicate his remaining energy to you."
Do you see a common thread here? All systems devote the limited and fixed energy they have to "internal marketing," and only the surplus goes to "external marketing."
How much energy internal marketing needs depends on how much mutual trust and respect the system has internally. Think about a highly educated young person with a Harvard Business School doctorate and $100 million dollars inherited from his parents. Will he succeed in life? It seems he has every opportunity and all the right connections. Right? What would you say if I tell you that this person has no self-respect or self-trust. Most of his limited energy dissipates between his ears. He wonders what to do. Do people really approve of him? He cannot cope with the external environment until he calms his mind first. Often such peace is won through therapy.
The same model helps us understand organizational problems and solutions. Many aging organizations have invited me to help them design strategies to increase their competitiveness. They have money, lots of it. They have the technology, most of it. They want me to help them develop their marketing orientation. Invariably, I find that the problem is not that they don't know the principles of marketing or strategic planning. They do. They can write the book on marketing and strategic planning. Their problem is that they can't address the problems of the fast-changing external environment because the members of the organization are preoccupied with internal marketing: Sales fighting Production, Engineering fighting Marketing, and Finance and Legal fighting everyone. That preoccupation with the internal environment robs everyone's energy. 16 When a customer makes a request from someone in such a company, the hapless client will hear, perhaps not in so many words, "Come back tomorrow, we're exhausted today."
It should be obvious that if an organization's energy is devoted to internal marketing, it must be at the expense of external marketing. That means the organization will be both ineffective and inefficient. Prolonged preoccupation with internal marketing can become an abnormality and, eventually, a pathological problem. In that case, the organization requires new energy from an external source: an organizational therapist to change its behavior.
Organizational lntegration
Those who focus on internal integration carry such titles as organizational development facilitators, process consultants, and so forth. Those who focus on external integration are called strategic planners and management consultants. The Adizes inter- vention process differs from both of those approaches: It provides external and internal integration as a comprehensively systematic program of change.
Although they are necessary conditions for organizational health, neither internal integration nor external integration per se is sufficient. If an organization works only on internal integration, the failure to achieve prompt results in external integration will cause the system to mistrust itself. People sense that they have been engaged in a "waste of time," and "all we did is feel good." Engaging exclusively in external integration, however, usually means a nicely bound, professionally presented report that almost never sees imple- mentation. Internal marketing devours the energy necessary to support implementation. Synchronizing those two processes of inte- gration is, in itself, a challenge the Adizes program has solved.
The Adizes Methodology
The Adizes program cues the "change leaders" so they know when to focus efforts on external integration, when to focus on internal integration, and when to work on both fronts simultaneously. The tools of the systematic program support internal, external, and simultaneous integration processes. Its systemic therapeutic intervention analyzes organizations to determine, based on their location on the lifecycle, what is normal and what is not. The methodology provides lifecycle-contingent therapy that the organization itself applies. Each organization's structure, leadership style, reward system, planning process, goals, and so forth can all be desirable or destructive depending on where the organization is in the lifecycle.
For years, I have struggled to find a name for the process and program I have developed. It i~ not consulting: Consulting, by and large, still adheres to the medical analogy, giving prescriptions. Nor is it process consultation. Process consultants focus on the process and don't necessarily dedicate attention to structure and the strategies necessary for external cohesion. And it's not a training program. Most training programs provide solutions and let the clients identify the problems.
I have named my process, symbergetic™ methodology. It is a symbiotic process that enhances the consciousness of interdependencies and the benefits derived from those interdependencies; and it is a synergetic process in which integrated and correctly interdependent diversity is rich with growth potential. I have long believed that the word "consultant" doesn't represent what we do, and the title "organizational therapist" is frightening: It implies a sick organization. We did try calling our practitioners "organizational coaches," but quite a few of our client CEOs objected, saying it connotes someone who tells them what to do. The title "integrator" is too pas- sive because it conveys mediation, facilitation, process consultation, and we do much more than that. So, after years of wandering through the desert, I am ready to introduce symbergy™, and to call a practitioner of the symbergetic™ methodology an organizational symbergist™.
You may wonder why I have gone to the trouble of trademarking the name I have chosen to represent my concept. All too many times, I see methodologies destroyed as a result of incompetent applications. Participative management, quality of working life, quality circles, total quality management, and reengineering are a few of the more recent casualties of incompetence. People read a book, and, before you know it, they are selling their capability to apply the new theory. To protect this methodology from such premature applications, I have trademarked its name, and established a graduate school licensed by the state of California to grant degrees and provide licensing and certification training.
Successful Integration
Organizational success is a function of the disparity between external and internal marketing. The less internal marketing, the more energy is free for the external marketing that enhances the organization's integration with its external environment. Companies that are internally and externally integrated are in Prime. Organizational symbergists™ help organizations deal with the abnormal problems management can't handle alone, providing tools for auto-integration. Integration is continuously threatened by change: both changes in the external environment within which the organization operates and internal changes caused by the organization's progress or lack of progress in its lifecycle.
How to do that? The next chapter introduces this subject.
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