...well it's been a while since my last post, mainly because I've been getting help to develop this Blog and the accompanying website.....so here we are.....so lets re-start the conversation.
First of all, the word Tavistock has, over the last few years, sadly acquired an arguably more sinister and certainly non-analytic connotation, though perhaps that might more recently still, be beginning to fade?
Of course, its historic connotation is not with, thoughtlessly seeing a 'symptom' and deciding to tackle it directly head on and so 'eliminate' the difficulty.
Rather, it seeing the symptom as being just that, a symptom OF something else....something less obvious, so that eliminating the symptom - e.g. reducing a high temperature with aspirin - will not address the underlying cause, so that the symptom or another one, will simply re-appear.
Tackling symptoms is what, in, say, a branch of the NHS, new managers may choose to do e.g. save money by closing down a psychotherapy department and relocating psychotherapists around the wider Trust.
It is too, what cognitively based therapies, such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), try to do with patients sometimes with some success but often leaving the patient with recurrent symptoms such as social anxiety more-or-less, intact.
The Tavistock Model of Organisational Consultancy (a de fact title, not a de jure one) adopts the view that symptoms of organisation malfunction e.g., high sickness rates, high staff turnover, a culture of complaint and grievance etc., are symptoms of deeper processes.
Just as a high temperature may indicate a deeper infection and/or serious illness the above organisational symptoms may too, indicate serious underlying processes which if not tackled, will simply re-manifest in other forms.
In essence, tackling the conscious processes will achieve nothing positive whilst tackling 'the unconscious at work' offers the chance of deep and more lasting change.
In the next Post, let's think about examples of this.
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