Replying to: Translating Systems Approach to Family Therapy to Organizations LO24111
David Kramer wrote:
-snip-
> In short, we say, long term customer loyalty and relationships cannot be
> achieved through marketing strategy, collateral development and
> competitive sales efforts. Long term customer loyalty, instead, can best
> be achieved through genuine human interaction in small, dialogic
> exchanges.
-snip-
> It is possible to see many organizations as dysfunctional families, and
> many group dynamic comparison can be made. Leader as father figure, etc.
>
> My question: from all of your experience, will the corporate world reject
> the idea of working with a social worker with a family therapy background,
> regardless of his national reputation as a trainer, and how effectively we
> are able to feature his organizational model?
Hi David, you state that the best way to achieve long term customer
loyalty is through genuine interaction in small dialogic exchanges. I
agree. For me, this implicates that you approach and treat professionals
as mature professionals. If you label an organization as 'dysfunctional
family' hence its members, than that is a contradiction towards 'mature
professionality'. I have strong doubts that professional co-workers are
willing to be labeled as members of a dysfunctional family, the call is
too negative. A father-figure implicates that the rest of the family are
children. I am sure you don't want them to behave like children...
IMHO I don't think collaboration and communication necessarily needs more
'family like' metaphors.
Families don't have other functionality than to create a save social
environment. Organizations have primarily a functional output: products,
services, whatever. The corporate world is always hesitating towards
therapy like treatments, and they certainly are not waiting for yet
another organizational model.
As said: relationships develop through genuine open communication, so why
not train directly on that?
I think two core questions have to be addressed:
On corporate level:
1) What skills are necessary to deal different/better with existing
(communication)structures?
2) What do we / I have to change in the existing structures to give space to
the development of these new (communication)skills?
If a consultant/trainer with a background in Family-therapy can help
organizations to answer these questions without too much fuzziness, why
not?
A message in a small story:
A child walked on the beach. Suddenly it stopped and picked up a small
object, observed it attentive and .. shouted excited: "Daddy, look, I found
a treasure!"
The father looked at it too and said kindly: "Oh, it is just a piece of
colored glass." from that moment the child only saw a piece of colored
glass, the magic was broken. Nevertheless, a moment ago... it was there... a
treasure.
Who can perform magic? The child that turns a piece of colored glass into a
treasure, or the father who changes a treasure into glass? White or black
magic?
collegial greetings,
Winfried Deijmann
-- Mr. Winfried M. Deijmann - Zutphen - The Netherlands Artist, Consultant and Facilitator for Organizational Learning, Leadership and Action Learning Events <deijmann@dialoog.net> Phone + Fax: +31-(0)575-522076 personal websites: International: <http://dialoog.net/deijmann> Dutch:<http://dialoog.net/deijmann/pinforma.html>Corporate website: HORIZONGROEP - BUNNIK - HOLLAND: <http://www.horizongroep.nl> corporate email: <deijmann@horizongroep.nl>
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