Survival of the Fittest

Recently, I’ve observed a couple of organisations or three that are making a serious fundamental survival mistake, especially given we are now well into the 21^st century: the century of discontinuous change. And, at the same time, I’ve met quite a few individuals who are also seriously ill-prepared for dealing with the world in which they live. Odd really because we’ve known the secret to survival for a long time.

Until the 1940s it was thought that organisms would always seek to stay in balance, called homeostasis, as a general principle of survival. I even learnt this as a trainee nurse in the 1970s, which goes to show how slow new knowledge can be adopted. This seemed to make perfect sense until along came a bloke with the seriously tongue twisting name of Bertalanffy. Among other important observations that he incorporated into what he called General Systems Theory, was the idea that this homeostatic rule was a fallacy. He reasoned that adaptation was critical to survival of species and that organisms, rather than just seeking balance, adapt gradually to changes in their environment otherwise they could never survive nor evolve. From a Darwinian perspective, it is impossible to see how evolution would work without adaptation, along with genetic ‘accidents’.

It didn’t take long for smart social scientists to apply the same principle to organisations. This was that organisations also need to be able to adapt to changes in their environment or risk becoming redundant. They need to be constantly scanning the external world to see what the latest trends and risks might be, to anticipate, and to have the agility to adapt. It is this last ability that is critical. Open systems are adaptive. Closed systems, on the other hand, are too intent on internal processes, policies, the manufacture of their current ‘widget’ to be looking outside or to the future. They tend to be controlling structures where decisions are made at the top rather than with the combined intelligence of the group. There may be a semblance of adaptive process but people within the organisation are not really empowered with information, a real contribution, and decision-making. In Simon Sinek’s parlance they are focused on ‘What’ rather than the ‘Why’ or even the ‘How’.

In an open system, leadership is focused on engaging people so that everyone is able to provide continuous feedback to the organisation from their interactions with the environment, people can express their expertise, there is freedom to move, people are trusted, conflict is managed constructively, expectations are realistic, and relationships are valued. Engagement makes an organisation agile-able to respond, like an organism, to toxins and to opportunities that enhance survival. Leadership is transformation and based on relationships, rather than transactional since the later, with its carrots and sticks approach is ineffective. Rewarding people with affirmations and punishing them with negative behaviour does not produce engagement. It is closed system thinking.

In my clinical role I soon learned that there are two types of people in the world when it comes to the ability to adapt. There are those who think that catastrophe will never affect them, that they are immune from bad things happening. Given this, like the closed system, they are not prepared when it does. They have not broadened their skills or developed contingency plans, the horizon is very short and they cannot see possibilities nor the options from which to choose. When things go wrong in their work or relationships, they have no room to move and end up compromising: stuck. Some people have personality characteristics that make change a difficult proposition, so they avoid even preparing for it.

This who have learnt or who have a more flexible personality are prepared for change: aware that anything can happen at a moment’s notice. They might be upset at the change but manage to find their way through it and come out the other end. They live in possibilityland and have skilled themselves in such a way that they can make choices from a number of options. Without the former there is no possibility of the latter.

In the words of the AC/DC song, ‘Are You Ready?’

The Art of Self-Deception

I think I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that I took up painting about 12 months ago. Not glossing the dunny door or the ceiling but art type painting. The word ‘type’ is deliberate as what I do is not yet what I would call art. It has been 50 years since I last picked up a paint brush or pencil with any real purpose. The last time was when I was 14 and my art teacher suggested I study science and gave me 5% for my art exam, which was given for just turning up.

Well, last Sunday, I had an interesting and somewhat unnerving experience. My better half had given me, for my birthday, a place in an art workshop with a very well-accomplished artist. Let me say that his is also a really nice person, enthusiastic, relaxed, fun and very helpful. There were about 12 of us there to learn how to paint pandanus trees. As we started our first exercise it became clear that my colleagues were mostly quite experienced at drawing and painting and that I was not.

 At the same time, I got off to a bad start, probably because I was anxious but not aware of it and made some rather hurried decisions on the canvas. The situation worsened and I found myself fighting off feelings of panic and succumbing to a sense of misery and doom. I bumbled along until lunch and then packed up my things with the intention of escaping. However, something made me just go and sit in my car and eat my lunch, as I reflected on what was happening. I wanted to leave but the fact that the workshop was a present and that explaining myself would be be complicated forced me to resist the temptation for flight.

After a lot of muddled thinking and a rather weak sense of determination I went back and finished the workshop. I’m still working on what I produced that day and it is coming along well. I certainly learned a lot about painting technique: when I let myself.

It occurred to me that I was having a flash back, a regression, to that bad old day when I felt similarly overwhelmed and out of my depth, helpless and completely at a loss of what to do as a student. It’s interesting to remember how it feels to be totally lacking in the resources necessary to recover from a situation. In this case it was a complete lack of technique or skill that would enable me to make any sense of the concepts being presented. This was an uncommon feeling for someone who is used to being on top of his game, master of what he does.

This experience was a poignant reminder of how our experience can shape us and define what we do, quite unconsciously. It demonstrates how we can limit ourselves without knowing it and end up feeling quite helpless, devoid of any idea about how to get out of our situation.

There are many people, mostly with conservative minds, who believe that people deserve what they get. They think that people who are poor, disadvantaged, chronically unemployed or otherwise not functioning well in our society should take control of their situation, to pull up their socks. The hard right think that our place in society is pre-determined. There are those born to lead and those born to be subservient.

My experience reminded me that our past our circumstances, our situation, can shape us in important ways. It can either enable us to believe anything is possible or that nothing is possible. It is not that easy to develop an awareness of the former if we have never had the role models, the learning that gives us the confidence to achieve, to raise ourselves up from the situation we are in.

For example, is well researched that kids who are raised in houses where reading is valued and encouraged do better at schools than kids in impoverished environments. We know that education is the biggest determinant of the level of social advantage or disadvantage, on any social dimension that one wants to choose. It is impossible to make choices when the options are out of awareness.

I guess this is a call for compassion: to understand that people are not necessarily behaving as they do completely out of choice. My experience tells me that all human behaviour serves a purpose. We may not understand why someone does something that appears to be a poor choice but you can rest assured that, at the time, it made sense to them. Knowing this means that we are more in a position to help them than if we just sit back in confusion or, more commonly, anger and rationalise why we should not help.

I think compassion has become a casualty of our obsession with self.

Change or Cosmetics?

Meet Gordon Comstock, an erstwhile poet in George Orwell’s brilliant book, ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’. Gordon comes from a wealthy background but the family wealth has been dissipated. In an odd twist Gordon starts to believe that wealth interferes with creative talent. He has a job as a promising copywriter with the chance of success. Gordon gives this up and gets a job in a bookstore. This begins a gradual decline into poverty, eschewing friends, including his long-suffering girlfriend who he thinks only feel sorry for him. After hitting rock bottom and his girl friend getting pregnant he has to make a decision between his ideals, a rejection of wealth, and his responsibilities. Ditching his new book of poems down a drain he ends up writing advertising.

Orwell’s book is a social commentary. But, it is the psychological that is of interest here. Humans are full of contradictions, of Yin and Yang: opposites as Jung cogently pointed out. Each individual is capable of great good and great evil, love and hate, trust and betrayal, compassion and inhumanity, so many others. Most people don’t like to think this is true of themselves and only others. Each of us believes we are incapable of the negative, except for the odd minor infraction.

So, Gordon is a part of our psychological selves. He epitomizes what Jonas Salk in ‘The anatomy of reality’, says are the illusions that prevent us acting in our own best interests. These illusions are the ways in which we protect ourselves from the truth in order to prevent potentially overwhelming emotions as our sense of self, our ego, who we think we are, is threatened.

We have no evidence that Gordon is talented other than his claims. His first book, mice sits on the remainder shelf. He doesn’t believe it either, at a deeply unconscious level and his ideals serve a purpose. At a conscious level it is society, the system, his status in life, and finally, the act of living that denies him. It’s impossible to know what it is that has created his fear of success, of self-realisation. Like most of us our real motivations are a mystery.

One of the interesting problems that we see in organisations is applying simple solutions to complex problems. As Dave Snowden demonstrates with his Cynefin model, this doesn’t work, and we have many examples of all manner of disasters to show that this is true. We live in a world of rapid change and complex systems, and we can expect to be confronted with many more complex problems.

As my little anecdote about Gordon demonstrates, human behavior is similarly complex. Unfortunately many attempts at changing peoples’ behavior at work fail. One of the main controllable reasons for this is that the solutions we choose are simplistic. Performance management systems, most training programs, carrots and sticks, and telling people they need to change, frequently fall into this category. Trainers and consultants engage with employers in what I call the ‘change foxtrot’ in delivering these simple solutions.

Human behavior change is difficult at the best of times. Even in therapeutic situations, where people are in great psychological pain, it is not uncommon to find that they still cannot change, learn new habits, so ingrained are their behaviours and, like Gordon, they are so lacking in insight.

So, solutions need to be very targeted at specific behaviours, experiential with a significant emotional component, commitment-based, conversational rather than didactic, person and problem centred, longitudinal rather than one-shot, and involve organizational systems and commitment.

This latter point means making sure there is follow-up in the organization, and involvement of the line manager(s) using a system of continuous improvement. It takes around 3 months to change a habit. It isn’t going to happen overnight unless something really dramatic happens and that is not very often in my experience. What we call the ‘Halo Effect’ lasts for a few days but old habits die-hard and quickly take over.

It is not so hard to understand why the ‘change foxtrot’ is played out. It takes little effort and the boxes for responsible action can be ticked. I was once asked to run some stress management workshops for an organization that was having problems with stress related sick leave. The CEO and the Training Manager wanted 5 one-day stress workshops for their 100 or so staff. I asked to have a look around and the opportunity to talk to staff before committing and was granted the request. I told the managers that there was little chance of getting any real behavior change with one-off workshops. It was explained to them that the stress was a systems problem and that for the same cost I would be happy to work with staff as a group to create some work changes and reduce stress. Stress interventions were also included. The result: much too-hard. All the CEO wanted to do was tick the boxes for WorkCover and then it was up to staff to do the changing. Strangely enough, this was a human services organization running programs for the disabled. Go figure!

Needless to say this is one of the worst forms of Catch-22: offering amelioration when there is no chance of it occurring and then blame the victim. And not uncommonly used when things are not going well and we don’t want the finger pointed at ourselves.

So, interventions need to be sophisticated rather than simplistic with the aim of creating real change, rather than the cosmetic: a hallmark of a complex adaptive system, compared to maladaptive.