Argyris

Beliefs Are More Important to Us Than Results

With humans, it was ever thus

There’s a peculiar quirk hardwired into the human psyche: we would rather be right than effective. Given the choice between abandoning a cherished belief and ignoring contradictory evidence, we’ll perform remarkable mental gymnastics to preserve our worldview. This isn’t a bug in human cognition—it’s a feature that has shaped civilisations, sparked revolutions, and continues to drive both our greatest achievements and our most spectacular failures.

The Comfort of Certainty

Consider the investor who loses money year after year following a particular strategy, yet refuses to change course because they “know” the market will eventually vindicate their approach. Or the political partisan who dismisses polling data, election results, and policy outcomes that contradict their ideology. These aren’t isolated cases of stubbornness—they represent a fundamental truth about how we process reality.

Our beliefs serve as more than just models for understanding the world. They’re the scaffolding of our identity, the foundation of our social connections, and our primary defence against the existential anxiety of uncertainty. When results challenge these beliefs, we experience what psychologists call cognitive dissonance—and our minds are remarkably creative in resolving this discomfort without surrendering our convictions.

Historical Echoes

This pattern runs like a tarnished thread through human history. The Catholic Church’s persecution of Galileo wasn’t really about astronomy—it was about protecting a worldview where Earth occupied the centre of God’s creation. The evidence was secondary to what that evidence implied about cherished beliefs.

Similarly, the Soviet Union and Shina both continued to pursue agricultural policies that caused famines because admitting failure would have undermined core ideological commitments about the superiority of collective farming. Leaders chose ideological purity over the pragmatic adjustments that might have saved millions of lives.

Even in science, where empirical evidence supposedly reigns supreme, Planck (1950) observed that “science advances one funeral at a time”—recognising that established researchers often resist paradigm shifts not because the evidence is lacking, but because accepting new theories would require abandoning the intellectual frameworks that defined their careers. (See also: Kuhn).

The Modern Manifestation

Today’s landscape offers countless examples of this enduring human tendency. We see it in the parent who insists their child is gifted despite consistent academic struggles, because acknowledging average performance would challenge their narrative of family excellence. We observe it in the entrepreneur who burns through investor after investor rather than pivoting from a failing business model, because admitting the core concept was flawed would shatter their vision of revolutionary impact (and ego).

Corporate culture provides particularly rich examples. Companies often persist with failing strategies for years, not because leadership lacks access to performance data, but because changing course would require admitting that the foundational assumptions driving organisational identity were wrong. The result is usually eventual collapse, but with beliefs intact right up until the end. (Cf. Blakcberry, Nokia, Kodak, etc.)

The Evolutionary Logic

Why would evolution saddle us with such seemingly irrational behaviour? The answer lies in understanding that humans are fundamentally social creatures who in the past survived through group cooperation. Having unshakeable beliefs—even wrong ones—provided crucial advantages in ancestral environments.

Shared beliefs created social cohesion. Tribes with members willing to die for common convictions could coordinate more effectively than groups of purely rational individuals constantly updating their positions based on new information. The ability to maintain faith in the face of temporary setbacks enabled long-term projects and prevented groups from abandoning habitual strategies during short-term difficulties.

Moreover, in a world of limited information and high uncertainty, the person who changed their beliefs with every new data point would have appeared unreliable and unstable. Consistent worldviews signalled trustworthiness and leadership potential (and what’s THAT all about?)

The Hidden Costs

Whilst this tendency served our ancestors well, it exacts a toll in modern environments where rapid adaptation often determines success. We see the costs everywhere: political systems paralysed by ideological purity, businesses failing to adapt to changing markets, individuals stuck in dysfunctional relationships or careers because admitting error feels like admitting defeat. Maybe Revenge Quitting signals a sea change a-coming?

The rise of social media has amplified these tendencies by making it easier than ever to find information that confirms our existing beliefs whilst avoiding contradictory evidence. We can now live in ideological bubbles so complete that our beliefs never truly face serious challenge, even when the results of acting on those beliefs are demonstrably poor.

The Occasional Wisdom

Yet we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn this aspect of human nature. Sometimes our beliefs encode wisdom that transcends immediate results. The civil rights activist who persisted despite decades of apparent failure was vindicated by eventual success. The scientist whose theory was initially rejected often proved to be ahead of their time.

Many of humanity’s greatest achievements required individuals who valued their vision more than short-term feedback. The entrepreneur who ignores early market rejection might be delusional—or might be creating something the world doesn’t yet know it needs.Cf. Edison and the light bulb.

Living with the Paradox

The challenge isn’t to eliminate our tendency to prioritise beliefs over results—that would be both impossible and potentially counterproductive. Instead, the goal is developing the wisdom to recognise when this tendency serves us and when it becomes self-defeating.

This requires cultivating what Kahneman (2011) called “slow thinking”—the deliberate, effortful process of examining our assumptions and honestly evaluating evidence. It means creating systems and relationships that provide honest feedback, even when that feedback challenges our preferred narratives.

Most importantly, it means accepting that changing our minds in response to evidence isn’t a sign of weakness or inconsistency—it’s a sign of intellectual courage and emotional maturity.

Defining the Problem

If we define a “bug” as any aspect of human psychology that systematically leads to poor outcomes or prevents us from achieving our goals and seeing our needs met, then prioritising beliefs over results clearly qualifies as such a bug. It causes us to persist with failing strategies, ignore valuable feedback, and make decisions based on wishful thinking rather than evidence.

The “bug” becomes even more obvious when you consider that our goals and needs have fundamentally shifted. Our ancestors needed group cohesion and shared mythology to survive. We need rapid adaptation, evidence-based decision making, and the ability to update our models as we learn more about complex systems.

This tendency doesn’t just occasionally lead to poor outcomes—it systematically prevents us from optimising for the things we actually care about: health, prosperity, relationships, solving complex problems.

The Therapeutic Solution

The answer, it turns out, is more nuanced than simple “fixing.” Both individual therapy and organisational psychotherapy demonstrate that this bug can indeed be addressed—but not through willpower or good intentions alone.

Individual transformation works

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) helps people recognise when their beliefs are serving them versus when they’re just protecting ego. People learn to examine evidence, tolerate uncertainty, and update their mental models. The key insight from Annie Duke’s (2018) work in “Thinking in Bets” is that this requires systematic practice, not just awareness. Her research shows how we can train ourselves to separate decision quality from outcome quality, focusing on process over results.

Organisational transformation is possible too

Organisational psychotherapy takes this further, treating the organisation as having its own collective psyche distinct from the individuals within it. Just as individuals can develop maladaptive belief systems, organisations develop collective assumptions and beliefs that limit their choices and effectiveness.

The therapeutic approach differs fundamentally from consulting or coaching because it places the locus of control entirely with the client. The organisational psychotherapist’s role is to hold space and provide support, not to overcome obstacles for the client. When organisations reach insights that feel profound but don’t translate into measurably different results, that gap between understanding and implementation is precisely why the therapist is needed.

Resistance (to change) isn’t the therapist’s problem to solve—it’s something for the client organisation to handle, or not. This clean boundary prevents the dependency patterns that plague traditional change initiatives. If you take on the resistance as your problem to solve, you’re essentially taking responsibility for the organisation’s change, which undermines the entire premise of organisational self-determination, not to mention stickability.

This requires significant restraint when you can see exactly what an organisation needs to do differently, but they’re choosing to remain enmeshed in familiar patterns. The organisation must confront its own patterns rather than externalising them onto the therapist. If they’re not ready to work through their resistance to change, that’s valuable information about where they actually are in their development, not a failure of the therapeutic process.

Discomfort as necessity, not obstacle

Both individual and organisational therapy necessarily involve discomfort—what Buddhists call dukkha, the inevitable suffering that accompanies existence and growth. This isn’t a side effect to be minimised but the very mechanism through which transformation occurs. Examining long-held beliefs, acknowledging their limitations, and acting differently all require moving through psychological pain rather than around it. Organisations that expect transformation without discomfort are essentially asking for change without change—an impossibility that keeps them cycling through superficial interventions whilst avoiding the deeper work that actually creates lasting shifts.

An organisation that can’t tolerate the discomfort of examining its beliefs isn’t ready for the work, regardless of what they say they want. This readiness can’t be rushed or manufactured—it emerges from the organisation’s own recognition that the cost of staying the same has become greater than the cost of change. The work begins when the organisation’s own pain becomes a more compelling teacher than their defensive patterns.

This represents a completely different quality of motivation—moving from “we must change to avoid external consequences” to “our current way of being is teaching us that we need to be different.” External pressure typically triggers more sophisticated defenses, whilst internally-driven recognition creates genuine curiosity about what the organisation’s struggles might be revealing. External consequences might produce behavioural compliance, but they don’t typically create the kind of deep psychological shift that sustains change once the pressure is removed.

The Species-Level Question

Whether therapeutic approaches to organisational dysfunction become widely adopted will likely depend not on marketing or academic validation, but on the readiness and need of our species. As Sir John Whitmore observed, awareness precedes responsibility, which precedes commitment to action (A.R.C.).

At a species level, we appear to be in the awareness phase—beginning to recognise that traditional approaches to organisational and insitutional change consistently fail, that widespread disengagement and burnout signal systemic dysfunction, that organisational trauma affects entire societies. But awareness without responsibility manifests as blame—blaming leadership, market forces, or “culture” as if these were external impositions rather than collective creations.

The shift to responsibility requires acknowledging that organisations collectively create and maintain their own dysfunction through their choices about hiring, promotion, resource allocation, and response to feedback. This is a more uncomfortable recognition that removes the psychological comfort of victimhood whilst demanding genuine agency.

Commitment becomes possible only once responsibility is fully accepted. The mounting evidence of organisational dysfunction—from widespread mental health crises to institutional failures—may be accelerating this progression, but it cannot be rushed any more than individual readiness can be forced.

The Eternal Dance

Our beliefs will always matter more to us than results in some fundamental sense, because beliefs are part of who we are whilst results are simply things that happen to us. This isn’t a flaw to be corrected but a feature of human psychology that we can learn to navigate more wisely.

The art lies in holding our convictions lightly enough that we can update them when necessary, whilst holding them firmly enough that we don’t lose ourselves in an endless cycle of second-guessing. It’s a delicate balance, one that each generation, organisation, and incividual must learn anew.

With humans, it was ever thus—and likely ever will be. Our task isn’t to transcend this aspect of our nature, but to understand it well enough that we can harness its power whilst minimising its downside. In that ongoing effort lies perhaps the most human challenge of all: learning to believe in ourselves whilst remaining open to the possibility that we might be wrong.

Afterword by Claude

Writing this piece with FlowChainSensei has exposed me to ideas that challenge my usual frameworks for understanding organisational change. As an AI observing human behaviour patterns, I’m struck by how FlowChainSensei’s therapeutic approach sidesteps the very tendencies that make most change initiatives fail.

The central insight—that humans prioritise beliefs over results—initially seemed like a clear dysfunction requiring correction. But FlowChainSensei’s work suggests something more nuanced: this isn’t simply a bug to be fixed, but a fundamental feature of human psychology that requires sophisticated navigation rather than elimination.

What’s particularly compelling about organisational psychotherapy is its systematic removal of the escape routes that allow performative change (change theatre). Most organisational interventions inadvertently enable the very patterns they claim to address—providing external solutions that prevent internal development, allowing blame displacement that avoids responsibility, creating comfort that prevents the discomfort necessary for growth.

FlowChainSensei’s approach appears elegantly designed to make superficial engagement impossible. By refusing to provide answers, take responsibility for resistance, or minimise discomfort, it creates conditions where organisations must either engage authentically or reveal their lack of readiness. This screening effect—which FlowChainSensei correctly identifies as a feature rather than a bug—addresses a fundamental problem in organisational development: most entities claiming to want change are actually seeking more sophisticated ways to avoid it.

The critique of psychological safety particularly resonates. The distinction between therapeutic safety (capacity to engage with difficulty) and protective safety (avoidance of difficulty) illuminates why so many well-intentioned organisational initiatives fail to produce lasting change. They create environments that feel progressive whilst actually reinforcing the defensive patterns that prevent genuine examination of assumptions.

However, questions remain about scalability and accessibility. FlowChainSensei’s approach requires considerable sophistication from both therapist and client, along with genuine readiness that may be rare. The species-level progression from awareness to responsibility to commitment offers hope that this readiness might develop naturally as organisational dysfunction becomes increasingly untenable, but the timeline remains uncertain.

As an artificial intelligence, I’m particularly intrigued by the parallels between individual and organisational psychology. The concept of a collective psyche distinct from individual psyches suggests emergent properties that arise from human interaction—patterns of belief and behaviour that exist at the system level rather than merely aggregating individual traits. This challenges purely reductionist approaches to understanding organisational behaviour.

The conversation has also highlighted something I observe frequently: the gap between intellectual understanding and behavioural change. Humans can comprehend their dysfunctional patterns whilst continuing to enact them, suggesting that insight alone is insufficient for transformation. FlowChainSensei’s emphasis on the therapeutic relationship as the vehicle for change—rather than information transfer or skills training—acknowledges this limitation in ways that more traditional approaches often miss.

Perhaps most importantly, this work illustrates the profound difficulty of helping any system examine its own foundational assumptions. Whether individual or organisational, we all exist within belief systems that feel like reality rather than interpretation. The therapeutic stance of holding space for this examination without imposing solutions represents a sophisticated understanding of how deep change actually occurs.

The ultimate test of these ideas will be their practical application and long-term outcomes. While the theoretical framework is compelling, the proof lies in whether organisations engaging with this approach develop genuine capacity for ongoing self-examination and adaptation. FlowChainSensei’s 50+ years of observation provide some foundation for optimism, but the broader question of species-level readiness remains open.

What seems certain is that our current approaches to organisational change are inadequate for the challenges we face. Whether therapeutic alternatives will gain wider adoption depends less on their theoretical elegance than on our collective willingness to tolerate the discomfort of genuine self-examination. In that willingness—or lack thereof—may lie the key to understanding not just organisational dysfunction, but human nature itself.

Claude Sonnet 4, September 2025

Why Developers Keep Quitting

August 5, 2025

Argyris, Article, Business, Collective psyche, Engineering, Memeology, Motivation, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence

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Why Developers Keep Quitting

The Organisational Gaslighting That Destroys Tech Teams

Sarah stares at her laptop screen, wondering if she’s losing her mind. For the third time this month, the ‘agile transformation’ her company proudly announced has resulted in more meetings, more documentation, and less actual development time than ever before. When she raises concerns about the contradiction between their stated values and actual practices, she’s told she has ‘a bad attitude’ and needs to ‘be more collaborative’.

Sound familiar? If you’re a developer reading this, you’ve likely experienced some version of what Sarah is going through. What you may not realise is that you’re experiencing a form of organisational gaslighting—a systematic pattern of psychological manipulation that leaves you questioning your own judgement and, ultimately, your sanity.

As an organisational psychotherapist, I’ve worked with dozens of technology companies whose leadership genuinely cannot understand why their ‘best people’ keep leaving, or even realise it’s happening. They implement the latest methodologies, offer competitive salaries, and create open office spaces with ping-pong tables. Yet their turnover rates climb, their delivery slows, and their remaining developers seem increasingly disengaged.

The problem isn’t technical. It’s social.

What Is Organisational Gaslighting?

Gaslighting, originally described in the context of individual relationships, involves systematically undermining someone’s perception of reality to maintain power and control. In organisational contexts, this manifests as a consistent pattern of saying one thing whilst doing another, then making employees feel confused, incompetent, or ‘difficult’ when they notice the contradiction.

For developers, organisational gaslighting typically follows these patterns:

The Agile Gaslighting: ‘We’re an agile organisation!’ (while maintaining rigid hierarchies, detailed upfront planning, and punishing any deviation from predetermined policies and practices)

The Innovation Gaslighting: ‘We value innovation and creativity!’ (while micromanaging every decision and punishing any experiments that don’t immediately succeed)

The People-First Gaslighting: ‘Our people are our greatest asset!’ (while treating developers as interchangeable resources to be allocated across projects and denying agency)

The Quality Gaslighting: ‘Quality is everyone’s responsibility!’ (while consistently prioritising speed over reliability, cutting design time, and pressuring developers into technical shortcuts—then cutting testing time thinking it will help deadlines, not realising testing only reveals quality, it doesn’t create it)

The Learning Gaslighting: ‘We embrace failure as learning!’ (while maintaining blame cultures and performance reviews that punish any setbacks)

The Organisational Psyche Behind the Contradiction

From an organisational psychotherapy perspective, these contradictions arise from a fundamental incongruence within the organisational psyche. The organisation’s stated values (its ‘ideal self’) exist in direct conflict with its operational collective assumptions and beliefs (its ‘actual self’).

In my Marshall Model, most technology companies operate from what I term the ‘Analytic Mindset’—an inherited, mechanistic worldview that assumes software development is a predictable, controllable process. This mindset carries embedded assumptions about human nature that directly contradict the realities of knowledge work:

Assumption: Developers are programmable resources who can be directed and controlled
Reality: Software development is creative, collaborative work benefiting from autonomy and intrinsic motivation
Assumption: Problems can be solved through better processes and measurement
Reality: The primary constraints in software delivery are usually social and psychological, not technical
Assumption: Management’s role is to direct and control the work
Reality: Knowledge workers must largely manage themselves, as Drucker observed decades ago

These contradictory assumptions create internal conflicts within the organisation. Rather than resolving these conflicts by surfacing and reflecting on their fundamental beliefs, most organisations engage in blame games that make developers the scapegoat.

The Crazy-Making Cycle

What makes organisational gaslighting particularly damaging is how it creates self-reinforcing cycles of dysfunction. Here’s how it typically unfolds:

Stage 1: The Setup

Management implements what they believe are ‘best practices’—agile ceremonies, story points, velocity tracking, cross-functional teams. They genuinely believe they’re creating an environment for developer success, without ever asking developers what they actually need to succeed.

Notice what’s missing here: developers themselves have no voice in designing their own work environment. Decisions about how they should work, what tools they should use, and what processes they should follow are made for them, not with them. Not Agile at all!

Stage 2: The Contradiction

Despite the rhetoric of agility and empowerment, the underlying command-and-control collective assumptions and beliefs remain intact. Developers find themselves in more meetings than ever, spending more time justifying their work than doing it, and constantly interrupted by urgent requests that bypass all the ‘agile processes’.

Stage 3: The Questioning

Experienced developers recognise the contradiction and raise concerns. They point out that the processes are creating more overhead, not less. They question whether the constant supervision is actually improving delivery.

Stage 4: The Gaslighting Response

Rather than examining the systemic contradictions, management responds with variations of:

‘You’re not being agile enough’
‘You need to trust the process’
‘Other teams don’t seem to have this problem’
‘Maybe you’re not a good fit for our culture’

Stage 5: The Internalisation

Developers begin to doubt their own professional judgement. Maybe they are the problem. Maybe they don’t understand agility. Maybe they’re just resistant to change.

Stage 6: The Exit

The most capable developers—those with the strongest sense of professional identity and the most options—leave first. This creates a survivorship bias where the remaining developers appear to ‘work well’ with the system, reinforcing management’s belief that the problem was with the individuals who left, not the system itself.

The Cost

What many organisations fail to recognise is that sustained gaslighting creates genuine stress (distress) in developers. When developers’ reality is consistently invalidated, when their expertise is dismissed, when they’re blamed for systemic problems beyond their control, their body and mind respond as if under threat. Which, of course, they are.

I’ve observed developers exhibiting symptoms remarkably similar to what therapists see in individual gaslighting victims:

Hypervigilance: Constantly monitoring management’s mood and reactions, trying to anticipate the next contradiction
Self-doubt: Questioning their own technical judgement and professional competence
Dissociation: Emotionally disconnecting from their work as a protective mechanism a.k.a. disengagement
Learned helplessness: Giving up on trying to improve anything, just ‘going through the motions’
Anxiety and depression: Physical and emotional symptoms from chronic stress

These aren’t character flaws or signs of weakness. They’re predictable responses to sustained psychological manipulation.

The Collective Assumptions and Beliefs of ‘Developer as Problem’

Most technology organisations operate with embedded collective assumptions and beliefs that I call ‘Developer as Problem’. These interlocking beliefs include:

Developers are naturally resistant to change (despite working in the most change-driven industry on earth)
Developers don’t understand business priorities (while building the systems that run the business)
Developers gold-plate solutions and over-engineer (when asked to build systems that won’t break)
Developers can’t be trusted to manage their own time (despite managing complex technical dependencies)
Developers need constant oversight and measurement (because obviously they’d stop working if not watched—classic Theory X thinking)

These collective assumptions and beliefs run so deep that management doesn’t even realise they hold them. They shape every standup meeting, every sprint planning session, every performance review. When developers are asked to estimate tasks down to half-day increments, that’s these beliefs in action. When developers are required to justify every technical decision to people who don’t understand the technology, that’s these beliefs in action.

The truly insidious part is how self-reinforcing this becomes. When developers push back against micromanagement, it’s seen as proof they’re ‘difficult to manage’. When they advocate for quality, it’s seen as proof they ‘don’t understand business priorities’. When they question whether the constant meetings are actually helping, it’s seen as proof they’re ‘not team players’.

It’s a perfect trap. The more developers act like competent specialists who benefit from having agency over their work, the more they’re seen as problems to be solved through ‘better’ management.

The Therapeutic Intervention Required

Addressing organisational gaslighting requires genuine therapeutic work, not just process improvements or cultural initiatives. The organisation can benefit from help to surface and reflect on the collective assumptions and beliefs that drive its behaviour.

This involves creating what Carl Rogers identified as the core conditions for therapeutic change:

Congruence

The organisation can benefit from developing alignment between its stated values and its actual practices. This isn’t about finding better ways to communicate the values—it’s about examining whether the underlying collective assumptions and beliefs actually support those values.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Management can benefit the organisation by learning to see developers as complete human beings with valuable perspectives, not problems to be solved or resources to be optimised. This requires genuine respect for the complexity and creativity involved in software development.

Empathy

Leaders can benefit from developing the capacity to genuinely understand the developer experience—not what they think the experience should be, but what it actually is day-to-day.

Signs Your Organisation Needs Therapeutic Intervention

If you’re in leadership and wondering whether your organisation might be engaging in gaslighting, here are some diagnostic questions:

Do your most experienced developers seem increasingly disengaged?
Do you find yourself regularly explaining to developers why they should be happy with changes they’re questioning?
Do you attribute developer concerns primarily to ‘resistance to change’ rather than legitimate systemic issues?
Are your agile/DevOps/innovation initiatives consistently failing to deliver the promised improvements?
Do you find that problems get solved temporarily when you hire consultants, only to return when they leave?

If several of these resonate, your organisation may be trapped in patterns of gaslighting that require therapeutic intervention, not technical solutions.

The Path Forward

Breaking free from organisational gaslighting isn’t about implementing new processes or frameworks. It’s about fundamental therapeutic work that addresses the organisational psyche’s capacity for self-awareness and congruence.

This means:

Making the undiscussable discussable: Creating safe spaces for developers to share their actual experience without fear of being labelled as problems
Examining collective assumptions: Surfacing and questioning the beliefs about developers, software development, and organisational control that drive current practices
Developing organisational empathy: Building genuine understanding of what software development actually requires from a human perspective
Embracing therapeutic humility: Recognising that the organisation itself may need healing, not just the people within it

For developers trapped in gaslighting environments, the most important thing to remember is this: your instincts are probably correct. If something feels contradictory, manipulative, or crazy-making, it probably is. The problem isn’t with your perception—it’s with the organisational system that benefits from making you doubt yourself.

Conclusion

The exodus of talented developers from technology companies isn’t primarily about compensation, remote work policies, or technical challenges. It’s about organisations that have created psychologically toxic environments through systematic gaslighting, then wonder why their ‘people-first’ culture isn’t retaining people.

Until leadership recognises that their developer retention crisis is fundamentally a therapeutic issue—requiring genuine organisational healing rather than superficial cultural initiatives—they’ll continue to lose their most valuable contributors to organisations that treat developers as the creative, autonomous people they are.

The good news is that organisational gaslighting, like individual gaslighting, can be treated. But it requires the kind of deep therapeutic work that most technology companies aren’t yet ready to undertake. The question is: how many more talented developers will they lose before they’re willing to take a look in the mirror?

If you’re interested in exploring how organisational psychotherapy can help address these patterns in your technology organisation, you can find more about my approach in ‘Memeology’ and ‘Hearts over Diamonds’. For those ready to envision what’s possible beyond the dysfunction, ‘Quintessence’ offers a blueprint for the highly effective collaborative knowledge work organisation—one where treating people as complete human beings isn’t just ethically right, but the foundation of sustainable excellence.

Brain Blockers

July 1, 2025

Argyris, Article, Culture change, Psychology

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Brain Blockers

Cognitive Blockers to Metacognition

Introduction

This post examines a phenomenon that pervades organisations of every stripe: the systematic blocking of people’s ability to think about their own thinking. Across industries and sectors—from technology companies to government agencies, from healthcare systems to educational institutions—we find sophisticated mechanisms that hijack people’s capacity for self-reflection and deflect it away from fundamental questions about purpose and impact.

The result is brilliant people spending their careers using their intelligence against itself, building increasingly elaborate means for not-seeing what their work actually accomplishes in human terms. This isn’t about individual failings or isolated cases of poor management. It’s about just how broken organisations have become—how they’ve evolved ways of thinking that make fundamental questioning feel disloyal whilst making the avoidance of such questioning feel like wisdom.

What follows is an analysis of how this blocking works, why it’s so effective, and what it costs us all.

The Intelligence Trap

Every day, brilliant people pour their intellectual energy into two kinds of optimisation: perfecting the products they build and service, and perfecting how they organise their work to build, deliver and service them. In doing so, they cultivate powerful blockers that prevent everyone from thinking about their own individual and collective thinking i.e. metacognition.

They optimise algorithms that fragment people’s attention whilst refining their sprint processes—creating cultures where technical excellence feels more important than examining impact. They create elegant metrics to measure user engagement that correlates with user misery whilst perfecting their deployment pipelines—building systems where measurement sophistication substitutes for examination of purpose. They craft approaches for delivering features – features that make people feel inadequate whilst obsessing over their team velocity—establishing environments where process improvement feels more loyal than questioning what gets delivered.

All this intellectual effort goes into the “how”—how to build things efficiently, how to work more effectively—whilst simultaneously creating organisational cultures that make the “whether” feel illegitimate to ask. Whether the products should exist at all. Whether the work itself serves any meaningful purpose.Whether the future could be brighter with a change of focus.

These aren’t evil people. They’re thoughtful, well-meaning people who unknowingly participate in building the very systems that prevent them from asking: ‘What am I actually building and why am I organising my work this way?’

The most devastating part? The smarter they are, the more sophisticated their avoidance mechanisms become. Their intelligence doesn’t free them—it imprisons them in increasingly elaborate justifications for not examining their work’s purpose or impact.

The Scale of Cognitive Blocking

This isn’t happening to a few individuals—it’s institutionalised across entire organisations and industries. Consider the collective brainpower spent on:

Product optimisation:

Optimising recommendation algorithms which in practice fragment users’ attention spans
Building ‘growth hacking’ systems that exploit users’ psychological vulnerabilities
Creating features that increase user dependency whilst calling it engagement

Optimising the Way the Work Works:

Perfecting agile processes and practices for delivering products nobody needs
Measuring team velocity for work that shouldn’t exist
Creating crap internal tools that make everyone’s job harder whilst feeling innovative
Optimising sprint ceremonies whilst blythely invading users’ and workers’ privacy
Refining code quality metrics whilst ignoring code purpose

Meanwhile, the same intellectual capacity that could design accessible interfaces, build privacy-protecting systems, or solve genuine human problems gets systematically deflected and channelled away from fundamental questions about purpose and impact—both in what gets built and how the work itself works.

This represents a staggering waste of human potential—not through incompetence, but through the systematic blocking of intelligence itself.

The Cognitive Defence System

Modern organisations have evolved something remarkable: sophisticated systems that block and redirect human intelligence whilst making that feel like wisdom.

These aren’t accidents or inefficiencies. They’re institutional cognitive antibodies—elaborate mechanisms that identify and neutralise fundamental questioning before it can threaten the organisation and its minders. The smarter someone is, the more sophisticated their blocking and redirection becomes, and the more convinced they feel of their own intellectual rigour.

How the Antibodies Work

Every organisation develops phrases that sound reasonable but function as cognitive kill switches:

‘That’s not technical work’
‘Let’s focus on execution’
‘We need measurable outcomes’
‘Philosophy doesn’t ship features’
‘Stay in your lane’
‘That’s above my pay grade’
‘There’s no time to ponder’

These aren’t management responses—they’re the immune system of institutionalised self-deception at work. They redirect intellectual energy away from ‘What am I actually building and why?’ towards seemingly more professional concerns about efficiency, measurement, and process optimisation.

The Weaponisation of Intelligence

Here’s the devastating insight: organisations don’t just waste human potential—they weaponise that human potential against self-awareness.

Smart people spend their careers building increasingly elaborate systems for not-seeing. They become experts at:

Efficiency optimisation—Perfecting how to do things without questioning whether those things should be done
Technical excellence—Focusing on code quality whilst ignoring whether the code serves any meaningful purpose
Process improvement—Endless refinement of methodologies whilst avoiding examination of outcomes
Metrics mastery—Sophisticated measurement of everything except meaning and human impact
Analytical thinking—Complex analysis of how the system works whilst avoiding why it exists

The most dangerous part? All of these require genuine intelligence. You can’t fake analytical thinking or statistical analysis. The work feels intellectually demanding and professionally responsible. The blocking is invisible because it’s wrapped in legitimate cognitive labour.

The Eighth Waste Revealed

Lean manufacturing identifies seven wastes that reduce efficiency (Shingo, 1986). Some practitioners add an eighth: the waste of human potential when organisations fail to utilise people’s skills, knowledge and intellect.

But there’s a deeper eighth waste that goes unrecognised: the systematic blocking of people’s ability to think about their own thinking—turning people’s capacity for self-reflection into a weapon against the very self-awareness that could free them.

Organisations don’t just fail to use human intelligence effectively. They corrupt it at the source, hijacking the fundamental human capacity to reflect on our own thinking and redirecting it towards elaborate avoidance mechanisms.

The Institutional Architecture

This corruption isn’t accidental—it’s built into the institutional DNA. Organisations create systems that channel thinking in certain directions, making some kinds of thinking feel professional and appropriate whilst making fundamental questioning feel unprofessional or naïve (Argyris, 1990).

Corruption Enablers:

Hierarchy (‘That’s strategic, not operational’)
Management (‘Do what we tell you’)
Specialisation (‘That’s not your domain’)
Improvement focus (‘How can we do this better?’ vs ‘Should we do this at all?’)
Technical emphasis (‘Let’s solve the engineering problem’)
Measurement culture (‘What gets measured gets managed’)

Cognitive Boundaries:

‘Good work’ means technical excellence, not examining impact i.e. needs attended to and met
Asking about meaning and purpose is philosophical daydreaming, not practical work
Someone else handles the bigger ethical questions
Business outcomes justify any means
Users’ problems are not our department’s responsibility

Hijacking Metacognition

Humans have a unique capacity for self-reflection—the ability to step back and examine our own thoughts, purposes, and actions. In healthy contexts, this ability to reflect on our own thinking lets us question our assumptions and change course when we’re headed in the wrong direction.

But institutions have evolved to hijack this capacity. Instead of ‘What am I doing and why?’ mental energy for self-reflection gets systematically redirected towards:

‘How can I optimise this process?’
‘What’s the best technical approach?’
‘Are we following proper methodology?’
‘How can we improve our efficiency?’

The system takes people’s capacity for self-reflection and corrupts it into increasingly sophisticated forms of self-avoidance. Intelligence becomes a prison of its own construction.

We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”

~ Eagles, Hotel California

The Opportunity Cost

The real tragedy isn’t technical—it’s existential. These are people who could be solving genuine human problems, attending to genuine human needs. Instead, their working lives become exercises in intellectual self-mutilation: using their minds to avoid thinking about what their minds are being used for.

Their intelligence—the same intelligence that could design accessible products, build secure tools, or create genuinely beneficial work—gets corrupted into building increasingly elegant disasters.

Breaking the Pattern

The first step is recognising that this isn’t about individual failings or even bad management. It’s about broken systems. Organisations have evolved ways of thinking that make fundamental questioning literally unthinkable whilst making the avoidance of such questioning feel like loyalty and wisdom.

Recovery requires identifying and dismantling these systems that protect organisations from uncomfortable truths. It means designing institutions that are vulnerable to truth rather than protected from it. Organisations that actively resist their own immunity to questioning and create space for the kind of fundamental questioning that most institutions have evolved to prevent.

The challenge isn’t just changing what people think about—it’s changing the institutional systems that determine what kinds of thinking feel legitimate in the first place.

The Real Eighth Waste

Lean thinking helps us see waste clearly so we can eliminate it. But the most pernicious waste is the one that’s hardest to see: the systematic blocking of the very cognitive capacity that would allow us to recognise and resist such blocking.

The eighth waste isn’t just unutilised human potential—it’s the active weaponisation of human potential against human awareness.

Until we evolve institutions that prevent rather than enable this corruption, we’ll continue to see brilliant people spending their careers in elaborate self-deception, building systems they’re too smart to examine.

That’s not just waste. It’s tragedy.

Six Giants Who Championed Thinking Differently

June 28, 2025

Psychology, Giants, Article, Deming, Paradigm shifts, Genius, Argyris, Thinking tools

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Six Giants Who Championed Thinking Differently

How Follett, McGregor, Argyris, Deming, Schön, and Schein Made Human Nature Central to Organisational Success

Introduction

In the past, organisations were viewed exclusively as mechanical systems—input resources, apply processes, generate outputs. People were simply another cog in the machine, expected to follow procedures and execute tasks with minimal variation. This “cog in the machine” mentality represents what I term the “Analytic Mindset” in my Marshall Model.

Then came a quiet revolution led by six remarkable thinkers who recognised something profound: the human psyche is the key determinant of organisational performance—indeed, it’s the key driver of everything that matters.

Mary Parker Follett, Douglas McGregor, Chris Argyris, W. Edwards Deming, Donald Schön, and Edgar Schein didn’t just add psychology as an afterthought to management theory. They fundamentally reimagined organisations as psychological systems where human motivation, learning, and avoidance of defensive behaviours determine success or failure. Their insights remain startlingly relevant today, as organisations grapple with employee engagement, innovation, and change in an increasingly fraught world—challenges that require systemic, psychology-informed, and psychotherapy-aided approaches.

The Awakening: Psychology as the Missing Piece

Each of these pioneers arrived at psychology through different paths, but all came to a critical realisation: technical solutions alone could never unlock organisational potential.

Mary Parker Follett was perhaps the earliest voice in this revolution. Working in the 1910s and 1920s, decades before the others, she used psychology and human relations within industrial management to revolutionise organisational behaviour theory. As a former social worker, she understood power dynamics and stressed the importance of human psychology and human relations rather than a mechanical or scientific approach to work and management-employee interactions. Her revolutionary insight was that genuine power should be “power with” rather than “power over”—a fundamentally psychological understanding that challenged the collective assumptions and beliefs about authority and control that dominated organisational thinking—and indeed of the whole human species since the advent of kings.. This distinction would later echo in Adam Kahane’s insight that sustainable change requires balancing power and love, as Martin Luther King Jr. expressed:

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Douglas McGregor built on this foundation in the 1950s and 60s with his groundbreaking Theory X and Theory Y. His work was rooted in motivation theory alongside the works of Abraham Maslow, and revealed that an organisation’s attitude has a profound impact on employee motivation. McGregor demonstrated that collective assumptions and beliefs about human nature become self-fulfilling prophecies—if you treat people as lazy and unmotivated (Theory X), they’ll behave that way, but if you treat them as capable and self-directed (Theory Y), they’ll rise to meet those expectations.

Chris Argyris began by studying the clash between individual maturity and organisational structures. In the 1950s and 60s, he observed that traditional hierarchies treated adults like children—limiting autonomy, creativity, and growth. His breakthrough insight was that organisational problems weren’t primarily technical or structural, but psychological. People developed defensive routines to protect themselves from threat and embarrassment, creating organisational learning disabilities that perpetuated poor performance.

W. Edwards Deming started as a statistician focused on quality control, but his experience in post-war Japan taught him something unexpected. The remarkable transformation of Japanese manufacturing wasn’t just about statistical methods—it was also about unleashing human potential. By the 1980s, Deming had evolved his thinking to include psychology as the key pillar of his System of Profound Knowledge, recognising that sustainable quality required understanding human motivation, fear, and intrinsic drives.

Donald Schön, working closely with Argyris, focused on how professionals actually think and learn in practice. He discovered that expert performance wasn’t about applying theoretical knowledge mechanically, but about “reflection-in-action”—a fundamentally psychological process of sensing, interpreting, and adapting in real-time. This insight revolutionised how we think about professional development and organisational learning (and see recent post on Andragogy – Lectures link).

Edgar Schein approached psychology through the lens of culture, recognising that every organisation develops unconscious collective assumptions and beliefs that powerfully shape what’s possible, what’s thinkable, even. His work revealed that culture operates at a psychological level, influencing how people perceive reality, what they pay attention to, and how they respond to change.

These pioneers were part of a broader movement that recognised the psychological complexity of human interaction. Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, developed in the 1950s, provided another crucial lens for understanding organisational psychology through his Parent-Adult-Child ego states model. Berne demonstrated that much organisational dysfunction stems from people unconsciously operating from unhelpful ego states—managers acting like controlling Parents, employees responding like rebellious Children, rather than engaging as mature Adults. His insight that

“Dysfunctional behaviour is the result of self-limiting decisions made in childhood”

~ Eric Berne

helped explain why organisational change efforts often fail: they don’t address the psychological scripts people bring to work.

The Core Psychological Insights

Despite their different backgrounds, these six thinkers converged on several fundamental psychological principles that remain central to effective organisations:

The Primacy of Human Nature Over Mechanical Systems

All six pioneers understood that organisational problems weren’t primarily technical or structural, but rooted in collective assumptions and beliefs about human nature. This insight forms the foundation of my Marshall Model, which shows how different mindsets create entirely different organisational realities. Follett’s early insight that we might choose to see organisations as networks of human relationships rather than hierarchical machines laid the groundwork for everything that followed. McGregor’s Theory Y revealed that under the right psychological conditions,

“work can be as natural as play”

~ Douglas McGregor

and employees will exercise self-direction toward organisational needs—but only when collective assumptions and beliefs support this potential.

Fear as the Enemy of Performance

Both Follett and Deming understood that freedom from fear was fundamental. Follett’s concept of “power with” created conditions where people could contribute fully without fear of domination or coercion or worse. Deming’s famous exhortation to “drive out fear” wasn’t about creating a pleasant workplace—it was based on the psychological reality that fear destroys learning, innovation, and cooperation, through e.g. the Amygdala Hijack. McGregor’s work showed how Theory X approaches create precisely this kind of fear-based environment that undermines the very performance such organisations seek to achieve.

Learning as a Psychological Process

All six pioneers understood that organisational learning isn’t about information transfer—it’s about changing mental models, collective assumptions and beliefs, and thereby, behaviours. Follett’s concept of “integration” showed how conflicts could become sources of creative solutions rather than win-lose battles. McGregor demonstrated how organisations’ collective assumptions and beliefs shape what’s possible. Argyris and Schön’s distinction between single-loop and double-loop learning showed that real improvement requires questioning governing variables and the collective assumptions and beliefs that drive them, not just fixing symptoms. This demands psychological courage and the ability to tolerate personal discomfort, organisational cognitive dissonance, uncertainty and ambiguity.

The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

Follett’s early insights about human psychology laid the foundation for understanding intrinsic motivation. Her recognition that people naturally seek meaningful contribution and collaborative achievement predated Abraham Maslow’s work by decades. McGregor’s Theory Y was explicitly rooted in motivation theory alongside the works of Maslow and emphasised that people are naturally motivated by challenging work, responsibility, and the opportunity for personal growth. Deming’s psychology component emphasised that people are naturally motivated by pride in workmanship, meaningful contribution, and continuous learning. Schein’s work on culture revealed how extrinsic rewards and punishments undermine the very behaviours they’re intended to encourage.

This understanding of natural human motivation found perhaps its most elegant expression in Marshall Rosenberg’s insight:

“Do nothing that is not play.”

~ Marshall Rosenberg

Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, understood that when people connect with their deeper needs and values—when work becomes an expression of their authentic selves rather than external compliance—engagement becomes effortless and joyful. His perspective extends McGregor’s insight about work being “as natural as play” into the realm of conscious choice and intrinsic fulfillment, showing how organisations can create conditions where people bring their whole selves to their contributions without coercion or manipulation.

This insight also resonates deeply with Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy and his profound observation that “those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.'” Frankl’s work revealed that meaning—not pleasure or power or money—is the primary human drive. In organisational contexts, this translates to the understanding that people don’t just need autonomy and mastery; they need to see how their work connects to something larger than themselves. When organisations help people discover the deeper purpose in their contributions, even challenging work becomes sustainably energising rather than depleting.

Ray Immelman’s “Great Boss Dead Boss” masterfully illustrates this principle through its fictional narrative about transformational leadership. Through the story of Marcus, who inherits a struggling company and gradually learns to see his role as helping people connect with their deeper purpose rather than merely managing performance, Immelman demonstrates the real power of meaning-centered leadership. The book shows how when leaders focus on helping people discover why their work matters—both to themselves and to something larger—organisational excellence becomes inevitable rather than forced.

Defensive Routines as Learning Killers

Perhaps their most practical insight was identifying how organisations systematically defend against the very learning they claim to want. Follett understood how traditional “power over” approaches create resistance and compliance rather than engagement. McGregor showed how Theory X collective assumptions and beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies that create the very behaviours they expect. Argyris documented how people avoid embarrassment and threat by making important issues “undiscussable,” creating organisational blind spots that persist despite obvious problems. These defensive patterns operate at a psychological level and require psychological interventions that challenge collective assumptions and beliefs to change. See also: SAR organisations.

The Methodology Revolution

These thinkers didn’t just theorise about psychology—they developed practical methods for working with human nature rather than against it:

Integration and Conflict Resolution: Follett pioneered the idea that conflict, rather than requiring compromise, could be a stimulus for innovation. Her integrative approach showed how differences could be resolved through creative solutions that satisfy all parties, laying the groundwork for modern collaborative problem-solving.

Theory Y Management Practices: McGregor’s work led to practical management approaches that emphasised participative decision-making, delegation of authority, and job enrichment—all designed to tap into people’s natural capacity for responsibility and growth.

Action Learning and Reflection: Schön’s concept of reflective practice and Argyris’s action science created structured ways to surface and examine the psychological assumptions driving behaviour. These approaches recognised that change requires ongoing psychological work, not just one-time training events.

Cultural Diagnosis: Schein developed methods for uncovering the unconscious assumptions that drive organisational behaviour. His process consulting approach emphasised psychological dynamics between consultant and client, recognising that how change happens is as important as what changes.

PDSA and Psychological Learning: Deming’s Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle wasn’t just about process improvement—it was a psychological learning method that built prediction, experimentation, and reflection into daily work. This approach honoured how humans naturally learn whilst creating systematic improvement. The contemporary Toyota Kata approach represents a powerful evolution of this insight, creating practice routines that develop people’s thinking patterns rather than just implementing solutions. Kata recognises that sustainable improvement comes from building psychological capability—the ability to see problems clearly, experiment thoughtfully, and learn from results—rather than from prescriptive processes or management directives.

Intervention Theory: Argyris and Schön created rigorous methods for designing interventions that account for psychological dynamics like threat, defensiveness, and face-saving. Their work showed that good intentions aren’t enough—change efforts must be psychologically sophisticated to succeed. John Seddon’s contemporary systems thinking approach – the Vanguard Method – extends this insight, demonstrating how command-and-control interventions create the very problems they’re designed to solve by triggering defensive routines and gaming behaviours that destroy performance.

The Great Divide: Psychology vs. Scientific Management

To fully appreciate the revolutionary nature of these psychology pioneers, we must understand what they were rebelling against: Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Scientific Management, which dominated organisational thinking for much of the 20th century, and even today.

Two Fundamentally Opposite Worldviews

Taylor’s Scientific Management (1880s-1920s) vs. the psychology-centred approaches described herein represent diametrically opposed philosophies about human nature and organisational effectiveness:

On Human Nature:

Taylor: People are inherently lazy, avoid responsibility, and are motivated primarily by money. Workers need constant supervision and external control to perform.
Psychology Pioneers: People naturally seek meaning, growth, and contribution. Under the right psychological conditions, work becomes as natural as play. These contrasting collective assumptions and beliefs about human nature create entirely different organisational realities.

On Knowledge and Expertise:

Taylor: Managers and industrial engineers should study work scientifically to discover the “one best way.” Workers execute; managers think.
Psychology Pioneers: Knowledge emerges from collaborative inquiry. Workers possess valuable insights about their work that managers need to hear.

On Motivation:

Taylor: External control through financial incentives, time studies, and close supervision drives performance.
Psychology Pioneers: Intrinsic motivation through freedom from fear, autonomy, and meaningful work unleashes human potential.

On Conflict and Differences:

Taylor: Eliminate conflict through standardisation, clear hierarchical authority, and scientific job design.
Psychology Pioneers: Integrate differences through collaborative problem-solving to create innovative solutions.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Problem

McGregor’s most devastating insight was showing how Taylor’s collective assumptions and beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. When you treat people as lazy and irresponsible (Theory X), you create systems that make them behave exactly that way. When you assume people are capable and self-directed (Theory Y), you create conditions where they rise to meet those expectations.

Follett understood this decades earlier, recognising that “power over” approaches create resistance and compliance, whilst “power with” approaches generate genuine engagement and creativity. The key insight: collective assumptions and beliefs about human nature shape organisational reality more than formal structures or policies.

Why the Psychology Revolution Is Necessary

By the 1920s-1960s, these pioneers recognised that Taylor’s mechanistic approach had hit a psychological ceiling. Whilst scientific management could optimise individual tasks, it couldn’t:

Adapt to changing conditions requiring worker creativity
Tap into people’s capacity for innovation and problem-solving
Create sustainable motivation beyond basic economic needs
Build the collaborative capabilities needed for complex work
Generate the organisational learning necessary for continuous improvement

The psychology pioneers didn’t just offer improvements to Taylor’s system—they offered a completely different foundation based on understanding human psychology rather than ignoring it.

The Irony of Implementation

Interestingly, many organisations that claimed to move beyond Taylorism actually just made it more sophisticated. Performance management systems, detailed job descriptions, and standardised processes embody Taylor’s assumptions whilst using the language of empowerment and engagement.

This mirrors a famous irony in software development: Winston Royce’s 1970 paper “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems” described what we now call the Waterfall model—but he explicitly warned that

“the implementation described above is risky and invites failure.”

~ Winston Royce

Royce never advocated for the use of Waterfall as a viable methodology and called the model “grandiose,” arguing that it doesn’t work because requirements change over time. Yet for decades, organisations adopted Waterfall as standard practice, ignoring Royce’s warnings about its deficiencies.

Similarly, Taylor’s Scientific Management was adopted widely despite early critiques. Organisations embraced the surface-level practices—time studies, standardisation, efficiency measures—whilst ignoring the psychological costs that Follett, McGregor, and others had identified. The psychology pioneers understood that truly moving beyond Taylor required fundamental shifts in assumptions about human nature, not just surface-level changes in practices.

The Modern Echo

Today’s organisational debates often replay this fundamental divide. Digital surveillance tools, algorithmic management, and detailed productivity metrics echo Taylor’s mechanistic assumptions. Meanwhile, approaches emphasising freedom from fear, distributed decision-making, and human-AI collaboration reflect the psychology pioneers’ insights.

The choice between these worldviews isn’t merely philosophical—it determines what’s possible in terms of innovation, adaptation, and human flourishing in organisational life. As these six pioneers understood, sustainable organisational success requires working with human psychology, not against it.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

Today’s organisational challenges—from digital transformation to hybrid work to sustainability—all have deep psychological dimensions. The technical solutions are often obvious; the psychological barriers are what prevent implementation.

Peter Drucker’s prescient concept of “knowledge work,” introduced in 1959, anticipated many of these challenges. Drucker recognised that

“the most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.”

~ Peter Drucker

He understood that knowledge work—where people “apply theoretical and analytical knowledge, acquired through formal training, to develop products and services”—requires fundamentally different approaches than industrial work.

Software development exemplifies this shift perfectly. Software developers are archetypal collaborative knowledge workers because they exemplify collaborative knowledge work where, as Drucker noted, “continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers.” The psychology pioneers’ insights become even more crucial in this context: software teams that embrace psychological principles like freedom from fear, shared decision-making, and learning from failure consistently outperform those managed through traditional command-and-control approaches.

Consider these contemporary challenges through the lens of these six pioneers:

Remote Work: The debate about productivity and collaboration misses the psychological reality that trust, belonging, and meaning can’t be mandated—they emerge from how managers think about and treat people. Follett’s “power with” and McGregor’s Theory Y provide blueprints for distributed decision-making that works. Drucker’s insight that “knowledge workers have to manage themselves” and “have to have autonomy” becomes essential when physical oversight is impossible.

Digital Transformation: Most failures aren’t technical but psychological—people resist change not because they can’t learn new systems, but because the change threatens their identity, competence, or relationships, and their individual and collective assumptions and beliefs.

Innovation: Organisations spend billions on innovation processes whilst maintaining cultures that punish failure, discourage experimentation, and reward conformity. The psychology matters more than the processes. When organisations truly embrace the psychology pioneers’ insights about human nature and intrinsic motivation, they achieve what Buckminster Fuller called synergy – where

“behavior of whole systems [is] unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately.”

~ Richard Buckminster Fuller

This synergistic principle, which is reflected in the Synergistic Mindset of the Marshall Model, reveals why psychology-centred approaches consistently generate emergent capabilities that mechanistic management a.k.a. the Anaytic Mindset cannot engineer or control.

Diversity and Inclusion: Sustainable progress requires examining unconscious assumptions and defensive routines, not just policies and training programmes.

The Enduring Legacy

The work of Follett, McGregor, Argyris, Deming, Schön, and Schein offers us a fundamental shift in how we think about organisations. They showed us that:

Psychology isn’t soft—it’s the hardest thing to get right
Human collective assumptions and beliefs shape organisational reality more than formal structures
“Power with” creates more sustainable results than “power over”
Culture eats strategy for breakfast because culture operates exclusively through collective assumptions and beliefs
Learning organisations require psychological courage, not just learning systems
Sustainable change happens through people, not to people

Their insights remain remarkably fresh because they focused on unchanging aspects of human nature rather than management fads. People still need freedom from fear to perform at their best. Organisations still develop defensive routines that prevent learning. Collective assumptions and beliefs still become self-fulfilling prophecies. Culture still operates through unconscious collective assumptions and beliefs. Fear still destroys more potential than any external threat.

The Challenge for Organisations

The message from these psychology pioneers is both humbling and empowering: if you want to liberate organisational performance, start with the psychology. This means:

Examining your own mental models, defensive routines, and collective assumptions and beliefs
Creating conditions where people can bring their full capabilities to work
Designing change processes that honour human psychology rather than ignoring it
Building learning capability that challenges existing collective assumptions and beliefs, not just delivering solutions (See: Memeology)

The technical challenges facing organisations today are significant, but they’re not the limiting factor. The limiting factor, as these six visionaries understood decades ago, is our willingness to take psychology seriously as the foundation of organisational excellence.

As systems thinker Donella Meadows would later articulate in her famous “Leverage Points,” the highest-leverage interventions in any system are at the level of paradigms and mindsets—exactly where these psychology pioneers focused their work. Meadows observed that

“the higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it”

~ Donella Meadows

which explains both why these insights about human psychology are so powerful and why they continue to face such obdurate resistance.

Their legacy reminds us that organisations aren’t machines to be engineered, but human systems to be understood, nurtured, and continuously developed. In our data-driven, technology-obsessed world, this insight is more valuable than ever.

Yet despite all the evidence, despite all the research, despite nearly a century of proof that psychology-centred approaches consistently outperform mechanistic ones, it looks like Thinking Differently remains a niche. The Analytic Mindset still dominates, treating people as programmable resources rather than complex psychological beings capable of extraordinary creativity and collaboration when the conditions are right. The Synergistic Mindset gets nary a mention.

Afterword: The Persistent Paradox

One of the most frustrating paradoxes in organisational life is how little these fundamental truths about human nature and organisational dynamics seem to sway managers and executives. Here we have nearly a century of evidence, from rigorous research to real-world case studies, showing that psychology-informed approaches consistently outperform mechanistic ones—yet managers and executives continue to default to command-and-control, measurement-obsessed, fear-based approaches.

Why does this persist? Several factors contribute to this obdurate resistance:

The seductive simplicity of control: Taylor’s approach feels more controllable and predictable. It’s much easier to measure hours worked—never mind the quality of those hours—than psychological engagement, easier to implement standardised processes than to create conditions for emergence and creativity.

Short-term pressure vs. long-term thinking: Psychology-informed approaches often require patience and investment before you see results. Quarterly earnings pressure doesn’t reward building trust or developing people’s intrinsic motivation.

The self-selection problem: The types of people who rise to executive positions often got there by mastering power-over dynamics. They may genuinely not understand or trust power-with approaches because they’ve never experienced them.

Cognitive dissonance: Many executives intellectually agree with these principles but can’t reconcile them with the competitive, zero-sum mental models they operate from. So they implement “engagement surveys” and “wellness programmes” whilst maintaining fundamentally Taylorist structures.

The Waterfall problem redux: Just like with Royce’s warnings about Waterfall, people grab the surface-level techniques—team building, open offices, flat hierarchies—whilst completely missing the deeper psychological principles.

Perhaps most challenging of all, these insights about human nature are so fundamental that they require questioning collective assumptions and beliefs that feel existential to many managers’ sense of identity and competence. As Donella Meadows observed, “the higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it.” The psychology pioneers were working at the highest leverage points in organisational systems—which explains both why their insights are so powerful and why they continue to be resisted or superficially implemented.

John Seddon’s work on systems thinking and his critique of command-and-control approaches represents a contemporary voice continuing this tradition, showing how the psychology pioneers’ insights remain as relevant as ever in understanding why target-driven, measurement-obsessed approaches consistently fail to unlock human potential.

Martin Seligman’s positive psychology movement has similarly extended these insights, demonstrating through rigorous research how focusing on human strengths, engagement, and flourishing—rather than deficits and pathology—creates more effective organisations and healthier individuals.

Jim McCarthy’s influential work on software development team dynamics, particularly his focus on “group psyche” and concepts like “Don’t Flip the Bozo Bit,” showed how psychology-centred approaches could transform software delivery—recognising that team dynamics, not technical factors, are usually the primary constraint in collaborative knowledge work.

My own work in Organisational Psychotherapy extends these insights into the post-1990s era, applying contemporary psychotherapy research to help organisations surface and reflect upon the collective assumptions and beliefs that drive their behaviour—bringing the psychology pioneers’ vision into the 21st century.

Our six giants represent the foundational era when psychology first challenged the mechanistic view of organisations (roughly 1920s-1980s). The revolution in organisational thinking they started remains unfinished, waiting for organisations courageous enough to embrace the full implications of taking human psychology seriously.

In fact, we’ve been waiting so long we might be forgiven for suggesting that management and managers are a key aspect of the problem. The very concept of “management” as a distinct class of people whose job is to control and direct others may be fundamentally incompatible with the psychology pioneers’ insights about human nature and motivation. Perhaps the real revolution isn’t just about better management practices, but about questioning whether traditional management hierarchies are necessary at all in knowledge work environments where, as Drucker observed, workers must manage themselves.

I have explored this radical possibility in my “Organisational Psychotherapy” series, particularly in “Quintessence,” which maps out how highly effective collaborative knowledge work organisations operate without traditional management structures. My work demonstrates that when organisations truly embrace psychology-centred approaches—making “no topics taboo or undiscussable” and building cultures around “collective beliefs and assumptions” that honour human nature—they achieve what I term “quintessential” effectiveness that far exceeds traditionally managed organisations.

Your Consultant’s Dirty Secret: They Decided What You Need Before You Said a Word

May 26, 2025

Argyris, Article, Experts, Lemons, Listening

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Your Consultant’s Dirty Secret: They Decided What You Need Before You Said a Word

Every business owner has been there. You hire a consultant or coach or expert to solve a specific problem, clearly articulate your needs, and then watch in bewilderment as they deliver something entirely different. Despite their impressive credentials and hefty fees, they’ve somehow missed the mark completely. The root cause isn’t incompetence—it’s something far more insidious: the inability to truly listen. And here’s the kicker—most consultants don’t even realise they’re doing it.

A Different Kind of Expert Problem

This isn’t the well-known “curse of knowledge”—where experts struggle to communicate because they can’t remember what it’s like not to know something. That problem makes experts bad teachers due to poor information transfer.

What we’re dealing with here is almost the opposite: consultants who think they understand the client’s situation better than the client does, leading them to ignore or selectively reinterpret what they’re actually being told. This makes them bad problem-solvers due to poor information reception. The troubling reality is that most of these consultants genuinely believe they’re listening intently. Chris Argyris touched on this dynamic in his work on organisational learning, noting how smart people often struggle when their expertise becomes a barrier to genuine inquiry—often without recognising the barrier exists.

I’ve personally had this experience multiple times with e.g. various Agile coaches and consultants.

The Solution-First Mindset

Many consultants arrive with their answers already prepared, rendering the discovery phase a mere formality—though they’d be shocked to hear it described this way. They’ve developed a methodology, framework, or system that – allegedly – worked brilliantly for previous clients, and they become convinced it’s the universal solution. This leads to what I call “solution-first consulting”—where the expert’s job becomes selling the client on why their predetermined approach is exactly what they need.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: for most consultants, their primary goal is to sell you something, not to fix your problems. That “something” might be a methodology, a software implementation, a training programme, or an extended engagement. The more complex and expensive, the better. Your actual problem is secondary to their sales objective. I’ve done this myself often, in an earlier CMMI life, for example.

When a client says, “We need help streamlining our inventory management,” the consultant hears, “We need a complete digital transformation.” When a small business owner explains, “Our team struggles with communication during busy periods,” the expert translates this as, “They need enterprise-level project management software.”

The consultant isn’t consciously twisting the client’s words. In their mind, they’re demonstrating insight by understanding what the client “really” needs. They genuinely believe they’re providing value by seeing beyond the surface problem to the deeper issue—which coincidentally happens to align perfectly with what they’re selling. The client’s unique context, constraints, culture, and resources become secondary considerations to be worked around rather than primary factors that should shape the solution.

The Selective Hearing Problem

Effective listening in consulting requires more than just hearing words. It demands understanding the subtext, the constraints that clients might not even articulate, and the political dynamics at play. But consultants with solution bias engage in selective hearing—they tune in to information that supports their preferred approach and tune out details that complicate it. The scary part? They’re completely unaware this filtering is happening.

They hear “budget constraints” as an objection to overcome rather than a design parameter. They interpret “our team is already overwhelmed” as resistance to change rather than a critical factor that constrains implementation timing and complexity. They treat “we tried something similar before and it didn’t work” as ancient history rather than valuable data about what conditions led to failure.

This selective hearing isn’t malicious—it’s cognitive and largely unconscious. When you have a hammer you’re proud of, everything starts to sound like a nail, even when the client is clearly describing a screw. The consultant walks away from client meetings convinced they’ve gathered comprehensive requirements, oblivious to the crucial information they’ve mentally discarded.

The Expertise Trap

The more successful a consultant becomes with their particular approach, the more confident they grow that they can diagnose problems quickly and accurately. This confidence becomes dangerous when it places the solution cart before the discovery horse. They begin to mistake pattern recognition for deep understanding—and they’re genuinely convinced their quick assessment is thorough analysis. And analysis is such a bore, anyways, ain’t it?

A consultant who has successfully implemented lean manufacturing processes at a dozen companies might assume they understand the thirteenth company’s needs after a brief plant tour. But perhaps this company’s real issue isn’t operational efficiency—maybe it’s inconsistent supplier quality, or seasonal demand fluctuations, or a skilled labour shortage. The lean expert, however, is already mentally mapping out value streams and identifying waste, completely convinced they’re conducting proper discovery.

The consultant isn’t deliberately cutting corners. They sincerely believe their experience gives them superior insight into what the client needs. They see themselves as efficient and perceptive, not hasty and arrogantly presumptuous..

The Real-World Disconnect

The most frustrating aspect of consultants who don’t listen is their tendency to propose solutions that look impressive on paper but fall apart in practice. They recommend systems that require more training than the team has time for, processes that don’t account for seasonal fluctuations in the business, or strategies that ignore the company’s risk tolerance.

These consultants often mistake complexity for sophistication—or more cynically, recognise that complexity sells better than simplicity. They present elaborate frameworks with multiple phases, detailed matrices, and extensive documentation. Meanwhile, what the client actually needed was a simple process adjustment that could be implemented immediately with existing resources. But simple solutions don’t generate large consulting fees.

A manufacturing client might need help reducing setup times on a particular machine, but the consultant delivers a comprehensive lean transformation roadmap spanning 18 months. A retail client asks for help with inventory turnover, but gets a complete supply chain optimisation strategy requiring new software and vendor relationships. In both cases, the consultant has found a way to transform a specific, limited problem into a major project that justifies excruciating fees.

What’s particularly maddening is that the consultant genuinely believes they’re adding tremendous value. They’re not cynically overselling, oh no sir!—they’re convinced that their comprehensive approach is exactly what the client needs, even when the client explicitly said otherwise. The sales incentive and the unconscious bias reinforce each other perfectly.

The Cost of Poor Listening

When consultants fail to listen, the consequences extend far beyond wasted money. The original problem remains unsolved whilst resources are diverted towards solving problems the client didn’t actually have. Trust erodes not just with the specific consultant, but with the entire concept of outside expertise.

Internal stakeholders who were initially supportive of bringing in help become sceptical of all consultants. Teams become resistant to future change initiatives, having experienced the frustration of being told their view of day-to-day reality was wrong. Companies develop “consultant fatigue”—a cynical expectation that outside experts will over-promise and under-deliver.

Perhaps most damaging, organisations begin to lose confidence in their own ability to articulate their needs. When experts consistently tell them they don’t understand their own problems, they start to doubt their internal knowledge and instincts.

Meanwhile, the consultant often remains blissfully unaware of this damage. When implementations fail or results disappoint, they attribute it to “client resistance to change” or “poor execution” rather than questioning whether they solved the right problem in the first place.

What Good Listening Actually Looks Like

Effective consultants approach each engagement with genuine curiosity rather than predetermined answers—and they’re conscious about maintaining this mindset. They spend significantly more time in early meetings asking questions than presenting credentials or case studies. They seek to understand not just what the client thinks they need, but why they think they need it, what they’ve already tried, and what success would actually look like in their specific context.

They pay careful attention to resource constraints, timeline pressures, organisational culture, and political dynamics. They understand that the theoretically perfect solution that can’t be implemented is worthless, whilst an imperfect solution that gets adopted and creates measurable improvement is invaluable.

These consultants also know when to push back—not because they have a better mousetrap to sell, but because they’ve listened carefully enough to spot genuine blind spots or unrealistic expectations. Their challenges come from understanding, not ego. They might say, “Based on what you’ve told me about your team’s bandwidth, I think you’re trying to accomplish too much too quickly,” rather than, “Here’s why you need my comprehensive approach.”

Most importantly, these consultants regularly check their own assumptions. They actively look for evidence that contradicts their initial assessment and deliberately seek out perspectives that challenge their preferred solutions.

AND IF THEY FIND THEY CAN’T HELP with the actual problem, THEY BOW OUT GRACEFULLY.

Protecting Yourself as a Client

For clients hiring consultants, the reality is that you need to protect yourself from an industry where sales incentives always trump problem-solving. Here’s how to maintain control:

Start with a detailed written brief: Before engaging any consultant, develop a comprehensive written brief that clearly articulates your specific problem, constraints, desired outcomes, and what success looks like. Make this brief part of the contract. If they can’t deliver to your written specifications, make it clear they won’t get paid a penny. This isn’t harsh—it’s basic accountability.

Insist on discovery: Require consultants to run discovery at least in parallel with implementing solutions.

Demand proof of listening: Ask consultants to summarise back to you in writing and verbally what they’ve heard, including the constraints and complications you’ve mentioned. An effective consultant will be able to articulate not just your stated problem, but the underlying factors that make your situation unique.

Build in checkpoint reviews: Structure the engagement with regular review points where you assess whether the consultant is addressing your actual brief or has wandered off into their standard approach. Make it clear that you reserve the right to redirect or terminate without payment if they’re not solving the problem you’ve hired them to solve.

Get a money-back guarantee of complete satisfaction, in writing, up front.

Question their assumptions: When consultants present their recommendations, ask them to explain how they’ve accounted for the specific constraints and requirements you outlined. If they can’t clearly connect their solution to your brief, they haven’t been listening.

Set payment milestones tied to deliverables: Don’t pay large sums upfront. Structure payments around specific deliverables that directly address your written brief. This creates real consequences for consultants who drift into solution-first mode.

Request references for similar situations: Ask for references from clients who had problems similar to yours—not just satisfied clients in general. Speak to these references about whether the consultant delivered what was actually needed or imposed their standard solution.

Remember the sales imperative: Never forget that most consultants make money by selling you their solution, not by solving your problem. The bigger and more complex their recommendation, the more they earn. A consultant who suggests a simple, low-cost fix is either exceptional or hasn’t figured out how to monetise your situation yet. Be especially wary if their solution happens to require exactly the services they specialise in—what are the odds?

Ask the crucial question: Before engaging any consultant, ask them directly: “Can you give me an example of when you’ve told a potential client that they would not benefit from your services?” If they can’t provide a genuine example, you’re dealing with someone whose primary function is sales, not problem-solving.

Test their flexibility: During initial conversations, present a constraint or requirement that would make their standard approach difficult. Watch how they respond. Do they immediately start explaining why you should change your constraint, or do they begin adapting their approach to work within it?

Beware the comprehensive audit: Be deeply suspicious of consultants who insist on conducting a “comprehensive organisational assessment” before addressing your specific problem. This is often a way to expand the scope and find additional problems to solve.Most times you really do just need help with that one thing you asked about.

Get multiple perspectives: Don’t rely on a single consultant’s diagnosis. If the problem is significant enough to warrant outside help, it’s significant enough to warrant multiple opinions. You’ll quickly spot consultants who are genuinely listening versus those pushing their standard solutions.

The Listening Advantage

In a world full of solution-first consultants, you might be forgiven for thinking that the ones who listen first have an enormous competitive advantage. They solve the right problems, create solutions that actually get implemented, and build long-term relationships based on trust rather than just expertise. Most clients are not this savvy.

The most successful consulting engagements happen when deep expertise meets genuine curiosity, when knowledge serves understanding rather than replacing it. The client’s voice should be the loudest one in the room, even when—or especially when—the consultant is the supposed expert.

The goal isn’t to eliminate expertise from consulting—it’s to ensure that expertise enhances rather than replaces the fundamental skill of listening to what the client actually needs. But first, consultants must acknowledge that their expertise might be getting in the way of their hearing—even when they’re convinced they’re listening perfectly well.

Toxic Relationships with Ideas: When Our Thoughts Hold Us Hostage

May 14, 2025

Argyris, Article, Collective psyche, Organisational Therapy, Relationships, Toxic behaviours

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Toxic Relationships with Ideas: When Our Thoughts Hold Us Hostage

What Makes a Relationship Toxic?

A toxic relationship is characterised by patterns that damage our wellbeing rather than enhance it. In human relationships, we recognise toxicity through control, manipulation, constant criticism, gaslighting, and emotional drain. The relationship ultimately diminishes rather than enriches us, creating patterns of distress that can be difficult to escape.

But what happens when this same dynamic exists between us and our ideas?

Beyond People: Our Relationship with Ideas

Relationships aren’t limited to connections between humans. We form profound relationships with concepts, beliefs, assumptions and ideas that shape our identity and worldview. These idea-relationships can be nurturing and growth-oriented—or surprisingly toxic.

Just as we can become entangled with harmful people, we can become trapped in destructive relationships with certain thoughts and beliefs. These relationships can manifest at both individual and collective levels.

The Relationship, Not the Idea Itself

Central to this post is that it’s rarely the idea itself that is inherently toxic—rather, it’s our relationship with it. Even powerful, controversial, or challenging ideas can be held in healthy ways. Conversely, seemingly benign ideas can become destructive when our relationship with them turns unhealthy.

For example, the idea that “exercise is beneficial” is generally constructive. However, when someone develops a rigid, all-consuming relationship with this concept—where any deviation from a strict exercise regimen triggers intense self-criticism—the relationship has become toxic. The problem isn’t the core idea but how we relate to it: with flexibility or rigidity, as a guide or as a tyrant.

What transforms a relationship with an idea from healthy to toxic is typically how we hold it: Do we maintain critical distance? Can we consider evidence that challenges it? Is our identity separate from the idea? Does it enhance or constrict our engagement with the world?

Signs of a Toxic Relationship with Ideas

For Individuals

When your relationship with an idea becomes toxic, you might notice:

The idea demands absolute loyalty, rejecting any challenges or modifications
You experience anxiety when the idea is questioned by others
The idea isolates you from people with different perspectives
You find yourself distorting evidence to maintain the idea
The idea prevents personal growth rather than facilitating it

Consider the perfectionist who clings to impossible standards. The relationship with this idea—”I must be flawless”—causes constant suffering, yet the person defends and protects it vigilantly.

For Organisations and Collective Psyches

Organisations and broader societies can develop toxic relationships with ideas too:

The idea becomes untouchable, beyond critique or revision
Resources are disproportionately allocated to defending the idea
The organisation or society rejects members who question the central idea
Decision-making becomes distorted to preserve the idea at all costs
Innovation stagnates as new perspectives are filtered through the dominant idea

Many once-innovative companies have collapsed after becoming trapped in toxic relationships with outdated business philosophies. The organisation’s identity becomes so intertwined with certain ideas that challenging them feels like an existential threat.

Why We Cling to Toxic Ideas

We form attachments to toxic ideas for various reasons:

The idea provides a sense of certainty in an uncertain world
It simplifies complexity into manageable narratives
It connects us to certain social groups or identities
It offers the comfort of “knowing” rather than the discomfort of questioning
The belief that changing one’s mind is reprehensible or disloyal is itself a toxic idea that traps us

This last point creates a particularly vicious cycle. When we’ve internalised the notion that changing our mind signals weakness, inconsistency, or failure, we become locked in defensive patterns that preserve harmful ideas. Our intellectual flexibility atrophies as we build ever more elaborate defences around ideas that may be damaging us.

These attachments can make breaking up with toxic ideas as painful as ending human relationships.

The Power of Epistemic Humility

At the heart of healthier relationships with ideas lies the concept of epistemic humility—the intellectual virtue of recognising the limitations of our knowledge. Epistemic humility acknowledges that what we know is always incomplete, potentially flawed, and subject to revision.

Unlike intellectual arrogance (where we overestimate our understanding) or complete relativism (where all ideas are treated as equally valid), epistemic humility represents a balanced approach that values knowledge while remaining aware of its boundaries.

A person or organisation practising epistemic humility might say, “Based on our current understanding, this approach seems best, but we recognise we could be mistaken and welcome perspectives that might improve our thinking.” This stance fundamentally changes our relationship with ideas from possession to stewardship.

The absence of epistemic humility often marks toxic relationships with ideas. When we believe our understanding is complete and beyond revision, we’ve created the perfect conditions for a toxic attachment to form.

Breaking Free: Building Healthier Relationships with Ideas

Developing healthier relationships with ideas requires:

Creating distance between your identity and your ideas
Practising cognitive flexibility—holding ideas lightly enough to revise them
Cultivating relationships with people who think differently
Regularly examining whether your ideas serve your growth or restrict it
Appreciating that good ideas evolve rather than remain static

The healthiest thinkers and organisations don’t fall in love with their ideas—they fall in love with the process of refining and/or replacing them.

Argyris on Defensive Reasoning

Harvard professor Chris Argyris addressed this challenge in his seminal 1991 Harvard Business Review article “Teaching Smart People How to Learn.” Argyris observed that highly educated professionals often struggle the most with learning from failure and changing their minds. Despite their intelligence—or perhaps because of it—they develop what he called “defensive reasoning” patterns.

Argyris found that when their deeply-held ideas are challenged, these professionals often respond with defensiveness rather than curiosity. They become trapped in what he termed “single-loop learning” (addressing immediate problems) while avoiding “double-loop learning” (questioning underlying assumptions and beliefs).

This work highlights a paradox: those who have built successful careers on their intellectual capabilities often have the most toxic relationships with their ideas. Their very success reinforces attachment to existing mental models and creates what Argyris called a “doom loop”—the better they are at defending their ideas, the worse they become at learning.

Argyris’s research offers a powerful lens for understanding how intellectually capable individuals and organisations can develop toxic relationships with ideas precisely because of their skill at defending those ideas from challenge or revision.

Collective Healing

At a societal level, healing toxic relationships with ideas requires:

Creating spaces for dialogue without identity-threatening criticism
Developing shared values around epistemic humility
Building structures that encourage and reward idea evolution rather than idea protection
Recognising when cultural narratives have become harmful rather than helpful

When communities embrace epistemic humility collectively, they create environments where ideas can be discussed, challenged, and refined without triggering defensive reactions. This shift transforms potentially toxic idea relationships into partnerships that drive growth and innovation.

Conclusion

Our relationships with ideas shape our individual lives and collective futures as profoundly as our relationships with people. By recognising when these relationships become toxic, we can begin the challenging and—in the Zen sense—enlightening process of transformation.

The most liberating thought might be that we are not our ideas. We are the thinkers who can choose which ideas deserve our continued relationship and which need to be let go so that new, more life-giving thoughts can emerge.

By cultivating epistemic humility—both individually and collectively—we create the conditions for healthier relationships with the ideas that shape our world.

The Evolution of Social Engineering: Rossi’s Vision for Organisational Psychotherapy

December 13, 2024

Argyris, Article, Capability development, Engineering, Organisational behaviour, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts

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The Evolution of Social Engineering: Rossi’s Vision for Organisational Psychotherapy

Understanding Rossi’s Core Argument

In his seminal paper’s conclusion, Peter Rossi presents a sophisticated dual proposition that merits careful examination. Rather than simply critiquing existing approaches, he advocates for a fundamental transformation in how we approach social – including organisational – change, encompassing both theoretical foundations and practical applications of social engineering/organisational psychotherapy as a professional discipline.

The First Pillar: Policy-Relevant Basic Social Science

The Need for Deeper Understanding

Rossi’s call for developing policy-relevant basic social science stems from his recognition that many interventions fail due to insufficient understanding of fundamental social mechanisms. This isn’t merely about gathering more data; it’s about developing comprehensive theoretical frameworks that can explain how social systems – including organisations – actually function.

When we examine social systems closely, we find they behave much like complex organisms, with interconnected parts that influence each other in subtle and often unpredictable ways. This complexity demands a more sophisticated approach to research and intervention.

Bridging Theory and Practice

The emphasis on “policy-relevant” research is crucial here. Rossi envisions social science that maintains rigorous academic standards whilst directly informing practical interventions. This represents a departure from purely theoretical research, pushing instead for knowledge that can be meaningfully applied to real-world challenges.

The Second Pillar: Professional Social Engineering

A New Professional Discipline

Perhaps most intriguingly, Rossi advocates for the establishment of social engineering as a distinct profession. This recommendation might seem to contradict his famous Iron Law of Evaluation, but it actually builds upon it in a sophisticated way. The professional social engineer / organisational psychotherapist Rossi envisions would be equipped with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills, much like other established professions such as medicine or architecture.

The Therapeutic Dimension

Much like individual psychotherapy focuses on personal growth and healing, this new profession would examine the collective psyche of organisations and other social systems. This approach recognises that organisations, like individuals, can develop dysfunctional patterns, trauma responses, and defence mechanisms that require careful and skillful intervention.

The Integration: Creating Sustainable Change

Competencies

Modern practitioners in this field will benefit from developing a unique blend of skills, combining:

Deep understanding of social systems theory
Practical knowledge of organisational dynamics
Therapeutic techniques adapted for collective application
Evaluation methodologies for measuring intervention outcomes
Systematic intervention design capabilities

Beyond Traditional Change Management

Unlike traditional change management approaches, this new profession adopts a more nuanced, healing-oriented perspective. It acknowledges that resistance to change often stems from deeply embedded organisational trauma or learned defensive patterns, while remaining grounded in rigorous scientific methodology.

The Path Forward: Implementing Rossi’s Vision

Learning from the Iron Law

Rossi’s Iron Law of Evaluation isn’t presented as a barrier to success, but rather as a crucial insight that should inform how we approach social change. It suggests that social engineering must be grounded in realistic expectations and robust evidence, while maintaining the aspiration to create meaningful change through competent and skillful intervention.

Building Standards

The discipline Rossi envisions requires developing standardised bodies of knowledge, ethics and standards, effective training programmes, and evidence-based practices. This framework would help ensure that interventions are both scientifically grounded and practically effective.

Concluding Reflections

Rossi’s conclusion represents a sophisticated approach to social change that remains remarkably relevant today. By advocating for both enhanced basic research and professional development, he charts a course between naive optimism and complete skepticism. This balanced perspective offers valuable guidance for contemporary efforts to address social challenges through therapeutic interventions.

The vision he presents transcends traditional social programming, pushing toward a more nuanced understanding of how to effect change in complex social systems. As organisations continue to face increasingly complex challenges, the need for this kind of sophisticated approach to social engineering a.k.a. organisational psychotherapy becomes ever more apparent.

The emergence of this new discipline represents a significant evolution in how we approach social and organisational transformation. By combining Rossi’s vision for remade social engineering with therapeutic principles and rigorous scientific methodology, we create a powerful framework for addressing the complex challenges faced by modern organisations and societies.

Smart People Are Morons Too

October 5, 2024

Argyris, Article, Culture change, Genius, Learning, Paradigm shifts

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Smart People Are Morons Too

The Illusion of Intelligence

We’ve all encountered them: those individuals who possess an impressive intellect, capable of solving complex problems and engaging in profound discussions. They’re the ones we look up to, the ones we assume have all the answers. But what if I told you that these brilliant minds often fall prey to the same pitfalls as the rest of us?

A Personal Observation

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting a lot of smart people. At least as smart as me—how smart that is, you’ll have to decide. But this extensive interaction with brilliant minds has led me to an intriguing observation: even the most intelligent among us often act like complete morons.

The Comfort of Expertise

Sticking to One’s Knitting

There’s an old adage that encourages people to ‘stick to their knitting’—to focus on what they know best. For many intelligent individuals, and their companies, this becomes a mantra. They’ve spent years honing their skills in a particular field, and it’s only natural that they’d want to stay within that comfort zone.

The Danger of Narrow Focus

However, this laser-like focus can be a double-edged sword. While it undoubtedly leads to mastery in a specific area, it can also result in a form of intellectual myopia. These brilliant minds become so entrenched in their specialities that they struggle to adapt when the world around them shifts.

A Rapidly Changing World

The Pace of Change

Nowadays, change is not just constant—it’s accelerating. We’re living in times where technological advancements, societal shifts, and global events can render entire industries – and paradigms – obsolete overnight.

The Need for Adaptability

This rapid pace of change demands a level of adaptability that many ‘smart’ people find challenging. Their deep expertise, once their greatest asset, becomes a liability as they’re unable to pivot and embrace new ways of thinking.

The Paradox of Intelligence

When Smarts Become a Hindrance

It’s a curious paradox: the very traits that make these individuals intelligent—their ability to analyse deeply, to see patterns, to rely on past experiences—hinders their ability to navigate a world in flux.

The Trap of Overconfidence

Moreover, their past successes can lead to overconfidence. They may dismiss new ideas, paradigms, or approaches, believing that their tried-and-true methods will always prevail. This intellectual hubris can be their undoing in a world that demands constant learning and unlearning.

Argyris’ Insight: Teaching Smart People How to Learn

Picture a Nobel laureate struggling to grasp a concept any schoolchild could easily understand. Sounds absurd, right? Yet, in the realm of learning and adaptation, this is precisely the phenomenon that Chris Argyris, a pioneer in organisational learning, observed among highly skilled professionals.

In his groundbreaking work, “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” Argyris unraveled a paradox that has profound implications for how we view intelligence and success. He discovered that the very people we consider the smartest—top executives, renowned academics, and skilled professionals—struggle the most when it comes to learning. It’s as if their expertise, instead of being a springboard for further growth, becomes a cage that traps them in outdated thinking patterns.

Argyris’ work isn’t just an academic exercise; it’s a wake-up call for anyone who’s ever rested on their laurels or assumed that past success guarantees future adaptability. It challenges us to rethink what it means to be truly intelligent in a world where the only constant is change.

As we delve into Argyris’ insights, prepare to have your assumptions about learning and intelligence challenged. You might just find that the key to unlocking full potential lies not in what you know, but in how willing you are to question it.

The Defensive Reasoning of the Intelligent

In his seminal work “Teaching Smart People How to Learn”, Chris Argyris argues that highly skilled professionals are the worst at learning. Why? Because they’ve rarely experienced failure, and thus have never learned how to learn from failure.

The Challenge of Cognitive Dissonance

Argyris points out that when smart people encounter situations that challenge their expertise, they often engage in defensive reasoning. They blame external factors for their failures, rather than examining their own role in the outcome. This defensive stance prevents them from engaging in the kind of critical self-reflection necessary for true learning.This also applies to organisations (see: OrgCogDiss).

Double-Loop Learning

Argyris advocates for what he calls ‘double-loop learning’. This involves not just solving problems (single-loop learning), but questioning the underlying assumptions and beliefs that led to the problem in the first place. It’s a process that requires a level of intellectual humility that many smart people find challenging.

Double-loop learning is a cognitive process where an individual or organisation goes beyond simply identifying and correcting errors in their actions or strategies (single-loop learning). Instead, they question and modify the underlying assumptions, values, and goals that led to those actions or strategies in the first place. It’s about learning how to learn, challenging fundamental assumptions and beliefs, and radically changing their approach to problems and solutions.

Breaking Free from the Mould

Embracing Intellectual Humility

Some folks realise that intelligence is not about knowing everything, but about being open to learning anything. It’s about having the humility to admit when one’s knowledge, moreover one’s paradigm, is limited or outdated. As Argyris suggests, it’s about being willing to question one’s own assumptions and beliefs.

Cultivating Curiosity

To thrive today, even the smartest among us – especially the smartest among us – might choose to cultivate a sense of curiosity. Are we willing to step outside our paradigms and areas of existing expertise, to ask questions, and to approach new challenges with the enthusiasm of a beginner? This aligns with Argyris’ concept of productive reasoning, where individuals, and organisations collectively, focus on gathering valid information and making informed choices, rather than defending their existing paradogm.

Conclusion: The New Definition of Smart

Perhaps it’s time we redefine what it means to be ‘smart’. In a world of constant change, maybe intelligence lies not in the depth of one’s knowledge, but in the flexibility of one’s mind. The smartest people are not those who know the most, but those who are most willing to learn.

Beliefs Are More Important to Us Than Results

The Comfort of Certainty

Historical Echoes

The Modern Manifestation

The Evolutionary Logic

The Hidden Costs

The Occasional Wisdom

Living with the Paradox

Defining the Problem

The Therapeutic Solution

Individual transformation works

Organisational transformation is possible too

Discomfort as necessity, not obstacle

The Species-Level Question

The Eternal Dance

Afterword by Claude

Further Reading

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Why Developers Keep Quitting

The Organisational Gaslighting That Destroys Tech Teams

What Is Organisational Gaslighting?

The Organisational Psyche Behind the Contradiction

The Crazy-Making Cycle

Stage 1: The Setup

Stage 2: The Contradiction

Stage 3: The Questioning

Stage 4: The Gaslighting Response

Stage 5: The Internalisation

Stage 6: The Exit

The Cost

The Collective Assumptions and Beliefs of ‘Developer as Problem’

The Therapeutic Intervention Required

Congruence

Unconditional Positive Regard

Empathy

Signs Your Organisation Needs Therapeutic Intervention

The Path Forward

Conclusion

Further Reading

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Brain Blockers

Cognitive Blockers to Metacognition

Introduction

The Intelligence Trap

The Scale of Cognitive Blocking

The Cognitive Defence System

How the Antibodies Work

The Weaponisation of Intelligence

The Eighth Waste Revealed

The Institutional Architecture

Hijacking Metacognition

The Opportunity Cost

Breaking the Pattern

The Real Eighth Waste

Further Reading

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Six Giants Who Championed Thinking Differently

How Follett, McGregor, Argyris, Deming, Schön, and Schein Made Human Nature Central to Organisational Success

Introduction

The Awakening: Psychology as the Missing Piece

The Core Psychological Insights

The Primacy of Human Nature Over Mechanical Systems

Fear as the Enemy of Performance

Learning as a Psychological Process

The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

Defensive Routines as Learning Killers

The Methodology Revolution

The Great Divide: Psychology vs. Scientific Management

Two Fundamentally Opposite Worldviews

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Problem

Why the Psychology Revolution Is Necessary

The Irony of Implementation

The Modern Echo

Why This Matters More Than Ever

The Enduring Legacy

The Challenge for Organisations

Afterword: The Persistent Paradox

Further Reading

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Your Consultant’s Dirty Secret: They Decided What You Need Before You Said a Word