Business Excellence - Psycho-dynamic Perspective.

The trouble with traditional approaches to "business excellence",  from LEAN to Six Sigma, is that they tend to work from the premise that organisations are rational entities.  The work of many "change management" consultants touches only the surface of the real human issues.  Here are three reasons why:  

 1) Organisations, like people, suffer from the same difficulty in shifting their behaviour through organisational change and it's not because they do not know HOW to do it because behaviour change is not merely a matter of knowledge or skill.   It is also a matter of "energy forces and flows" and "connecting parts" in a sea of "lived experiences" which make up the environment in which a person exists.  The ability of the consultant to surface these, understand them and work with them is key. 

2)  Most process improvement practices  focus on the "doing" rather than the "social dynamic" of processes, because "doing" is more culturally valued and rewarded than "talking" (which is seen as time wasting or hot air).  The result  is that departments retreat further into silos as a defense mechanism and keep "doing" more of the same, as they do not have the time or motivation to work through their differences.  In this way, potential opportunities and savings from connecting parts become impossible as gridlock sets in as "bus-i-ness" takes over.  

3) To really work at improvement in the human factors, one must focus on counter-balancing resistances and revealing blindspots at a very deep level for a prolonged period of time - the disequilibrium, although disruptive, is actually a very productive zone, yet most change consultants do not go far enough in maintaining and holding the tensions for the real productivity to occur.  This is gritty work, which in a piling-up workload, appears to add oil to an already raging fire of activity.   

In native American cultures, oil is added to the fire as an offering to spirit, to help bring us back to what is core.  As we sit around the fire, we start to see what is within it and the patterns it makes.  We can read the fire in new ways, and then we realise that what we were burning was no longer useful anyway, because the context has changed and we must build anew.  Fire is renewal and oil gives us new pictures and brings our attention to what needs to be looked out. But unless we know how to put the oil in the right  amount and right place and read what happens, the fire soon rages out of control or peters out.   

Complicated?  Not at all, the easiest way to tackle all three points is through heartfelt conversation.  And yet, they are constantly avoided.  Here is an example where simplicity - less - really can be MORE,  and how human nature has built up so many defences that we create our own complexity and a myriad of protective structures to keep that complexity.  

When psychodynamic analysis is added into the Business Excellence mix, we can begin to connect many parts and insights that have become split off and disconnected, and start addressing some core underlying factors within cultural gridlocks  But, first we have to lose the myth that "social" work is not important work and transition from a generation of "doers" to a generation of "collaborators".

To find out more, sign up for our webinar on 17 May (see opposite) or join our Belbin Team Role training to learn a practical tool for introducing social awareness into your LEAN programme.   

When attitude = value, less can be more.