Posts from — August 2008

We’ve been looking at the problems of psychotherapy for treating the struggles caused by their growth trajectory. Let’s look at one of the causes for these struggles, the transition between one level of “capability of information processing” to another. These transitions re so painful that Julian Fairfled has said that some of them were emotional breakdowns for him. You’d be crazy to want to go through more of them than you have to.

Why is this important? I’m saying that these transitions cause psychological problems that lead many to psychotherapies. The psychotherapist rarely has an understanding of what is truly wrong and so treats symptoms that will never change the underlying problem. The way that you think is undergoing a fundamental change, you are losing the ways that worked and yet have not yet gotten new ways. It’s being lost.

Psychotherapist often simply treat various irrelevant issues until so much time has passed that the analysand has passed through the transition. He feels much better, hugs the therapist and everyone is happy.

Kind of.
[Read more →]

NASA image of shuttle o-ring. A little detail that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger.

Whether you side with those who prefer God or the devil being in the details, it’s hard to imagine that they don’t matter. To be successful, you can’t ignore the details.

You can take this two different ways.

That thought struck me as I was reading a recently Register editorial about how Google’s and Amazon’s cloud computing initiatives will take your money and step on your dreams (warning: obscenities). Dzuiba’s point’s can be summarized quickly: [Read more →]

For Friday, here’s “Seven Distinct Paths of Decision and Action” [7MB PDF] by Warren Kinston and Jimmy Algie from 1989.

This paper describes the seven different approaches to decision-making, but note that it’s really about action, since decisions without action aren’t really decisions for managers.

They clarified this model of many years. Algie started developing it back in the 1970s, and I think that Kinston was developing something along these lines independently. Coming together at Brunel in the 1980s, they formed a fruitful partnership in teasing out the details of the seven different approaches to deciding and acting.

If people are to gain increased control over their own actions, they need a framework which encompasses the possible distinctive approaches to decisive action from their own practical standpoint. The main questions we have sought to clarify, therefore, are: (a) what distinct approaches exist in practice, and (b) when should each be used or avoided. Our research has resulted in a framework of distinct approaches which model the different ways that people can and do act. In any particular case. the issue. the individuals concerned and the circumstances determine what actually occurs. [pp. 117]

Their emphasis is on how managers can make better decisions. They were practicing this in their consulting and commercial short courses, especially but not exclusively in the healthcare industry in the U.K. (They also did extensive work in other areas, including government.)

For that reason, it’s worth spending the time to get through. They show how each different approach leads to a very different path to action. [Read more →]

I recently had an exchange in another site with “Marcy”, who talked about some judgments that she had about some of her previous therapists who didn’t fit with her. (One of her old therapists, with whom she did good work, wrote a book with Warren Rule. I think this says a lot about her.) She was trying to find a new psychotherapist in her region and kept talking about this great therapist she used to have, in another region. It turns out that the guy has co-authored a book with Warren Rule, which says a great deal about him. And Marcy.

We’ve had our fair number of exchanges, so I sent a note which is relevant to our discussions because most high-potentials seem to seek out psychotherapies. They don’t always have a good experience. She seems to be a high-potential, with the accompanying issues.

A bit of what I said:

It doesn’t have to be true, because there are always exceptions, but I think that having a therapist who is generally at least in your league, mental-process-wise, works better. You don’t want a therapist who cannot understand the cognitive processes that you use. Personality is important, but if they can’t understand what you are saying when you feel you are speaking plainly (and there are some real reasons why this happens that are no one’s “fault”) it’s probably going to be a waste of your time. Degree is irrelevant to this, of course.

Does raise an issue, though. There’s a pretty good chance that you are mentally overwhelming the people in your small community. That can make social relations very difficult for the best of us. If you already feel uncomfortable with people, this can cause debilitating affective disorders. Therapy is of little value in this, except to help with coping skills. Personally, I’ve gotten to the point where I reckon it’s better to fix the broken leg rather than learn to cope with it. If the locals aren’t “getting” you, that could be a really nasty addition to the other stresses.

Marcy’s reply:

Mental / psychological differences shouldn’t be such hindrances, should they?

Which is really where this post starts. It’s rough, and full of raw edits from a much longer discussion. But it may be useful.

So I’m letting y’all see it. And perhaps it will raise comments about the role of psychotherapies in relationship to helping high-potentials navigate their several transitions, and the unique problems associate with their lives.

Okay, I’m probably talking about you which is why I decided to put up this set of notes as we wait for the new newsletter.
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Following his own inner beat (at DragonCon 2006))

It’s August, and time for contemplating the beginning of the school year here in the States, the upcoming festival of geekiness that is DragonCon (see picture, and, no, that is not me — although it does come from my camera), and I am busy fending off the calls to join the ticket. So please, Senators, let me say it again: I have withdrawn from the race!

It being August, I thought it a good time reiterate the most useful piece of coaching I can give you: do you what you’re good at doing.

It seems so simple that feels almost insulting to receive as advice: Do what you’re good at. It seems like such a truism.

Except that so many high potentials just don’t see it.

They spend their lives working at things that are to meet someone else’s expectations, or even what they think someone else wants (but really that person doesn’t care.)

This isn’t a recipe for success. So why do they do it?

Some of them are still caught in the Overachiever’s Dilemma. You’re good at something, usually something technical or detailed, and so good that you massively outperform all other comers. But that’s just because you are doing that PeopleFit called “burning capability”: you are a size too big for the role you have, so you can do the job faster than anyone else.

But you don’t really like the job. You feel like you could do much more, doing something else. But you get strokes being better than anyone else. Deep in your heart you know you need to jump to something else before you get stuck here but you can’t make the break.

Others have already passed through the Overachiever’s Dilemma. Now living in the Underachiever’s Nightmare, they have so much more capability than the job requires that they can’t do it well. Think of a highly trained cabinetmaker trying to pass himself off as a student in a high school wood shop class. It sounds like it would be a cinch, but the expert always tries to do more. And then there’s the insane, mind-numbing, soul-destroying boredom.

So why not just do what you’re good at? [Read more →]

There’s a reason why I talk about so many different ways of looking at your career, things like Levels of Work, the 7 Languages of Achievement, domains of work, and even personality differences. It’s all about helping you stop making career decisions that have almost no chance of working. For you.

Because, you see, what’s risky for most people is actually a low-risk decision for high-potentials.

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

“Pete”, one of people I advised through a couple of transitions, has an incredible offer right now. It’s more money, with a massive corporation based just an hour or so away. The benefits are better and he would be working with others in his profession. Best of all, it includes several friends with whom he studied for licensure.

It would seem that it would be a “no-brainer” decision, one that can be made simply, barring any other elements.

But is it? [Read more →]

Here’s the second in the set, from 1990. Warren probably hasn’t really looked at these for some time, and I know that he has taken things farther in documents coming out of his SIGMA Centre.

Warren Kinston and Ralph Rowbottom. 1990. “A New Model of Managing Based On Levels of Work”. Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, 17: 89-113. [PDF, 9.3MB]

The introduction from this paper: [Read more →]

After Glenn Mehltretter’s comments about Kinston and Rowbottom’s article from 1990, I went and got copies, OCRed them, and got Warren’s permission to post them here. This is the first, from 1989. They are useful articles and should be in someone’s database but this journal has never been electronically archived anywhere that I could find.

Warren has developed these articles further in later documents. These are substantially correct from today’s point of view, I think, but still missing some of the changes that they made later.

You may also wish to pick up Rowbottom and Billis’s Organisational Design: The Work Levels Approach from the GO Society website (check in the online books section).

Note that Warren’s 7 Languages of Achievement (or decision making) are something different than the seven work levels.

Also interesting is that Kinston and Rowbottom are writing about seven levels of work, as did Rowbottom and Billis. Jaques at some point allowed for an 8th level of work within organizations, and said that other levels of thinking exist. He was kind of wrong here and kind of right, but it is useful to think of seven levels of work as outlined in this article being within a single domain of work.

Even in situations where there is no hierarchical relationships (no Managerial Authority Hierarchy, in Jaques’s term) you still have work being done at a certain level. just because attorneys in a firm work in a Partnership and not a work hierarchy doesn’t mean that all of them do work at the same work level. So this is useful for a variety of contexts, even those not in MAHs.

Warren Kinston and Ralph Rowbottom. 1989. “Levels of Work: New Applications To Management In Large Organisations”. Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, 16: 19-34. [PDF: 6.3MB]

The introductory comments from this paper: [Read more →]